Title: Three essays on innovation networks, cluster policies and regional knowledge production
Abstract: This dissertation presents three essays on innovation networks, cluster policies and regional knowledge production. Following the development of policies aiming at supporting innovation networks, especially cluster policies, this thesis intends to empirically test one of the theoretical foundations of these policies suggesting that the structure of innovation networks would have an impact on the knowledge production within regions. In doing so, it provides answers to a fundamental question from the geography of innovation literature and brings a new perspective to the analysis of cluster policies by evaluating them regarding their role for the structuration of innovation networks. The first essay (Chapter 2) thus analyses the extent to which regional innovation is influenced by the structure of innovation networks. Although the development of policies supporting innovation networks suggests the existence of a potential relationship between the structure of innovation networks and knowledge production within regions, empirical evidence supporting this relationship is still scarce. Based from the French case, the results of Chapter 2 highlight the existence of this relationship, confirming that the structure of innovation networks has an impact on regional knowledge production. This result therefore reinforces the relevance of policies supporting innovation networks and underlines their importance for the optimisation of innovation networks. Building on this result, the second and third essays of the thesis (Chapters 3 and 4) propose an evaluation of cluster policies. These chapters stand out from the literature evaluating cluster policies by focusing on network failures