1 Introduction

In recent years, research on the relationship between science and innovation has flourished remarkably. Highly relevant studies have been conducted on issues such as how to support scientific knowledge production processes and the transfer thereof (Fudickar and Hottenrott 2019), what kind of transfer channels exist (Intarakumnerd and Goto 2018), what are the regional effects of scientific activities on innovation output (Pfister et al. 2021), what role is played by public research on industrial R&D activities and outputs (Cohen et al. 2003), and how innovation paths unfold in science and technology (Xu et al. 2020). Furthermore, the relevant recent literature has also contributed to further our understanding on how to measure the linkages between science and innovation via text mining deployed in scientific publications and patent documents (Motohashi et al. 2024), and how to investigate and analyze the connections between scientific and practical knowledge inputs in innovation processes and systems in the context of combined innovation policy approaches (Isaksen and Nilsson 2013).

Nonetheless, and despite the highly relevant and promising insights this line of inquiry has generated, more efforts are needed to further disentangle the complex relationships at work. Scientific knowledge and its implementation via inventive and innovative activities is a strong driver of growth and, therefore, of high societal and political interest. Over the past decades, regional innovation policy has come to the forefront among policy initiatives in this regard, and along with that an abundance of different policy approaches that are sometimes difficult to comprehend and challenging to deploy have been developed. Given the relevance of the topic more scientific insights, especially on the underlying mechanisms, are desperately needed in order to assist policy makers.

This special issue is based on special sessions that took place at the Global Economic Geography Conference in Dublin, 2022. The main objective is to contribute to the research that aims to develop a more insightful understanding of the processes and mechanisms that initiate and drive local interactions between science and innovation activities in the economy. The papers in this Special Issue advance this line of inquiry in two directions that have unfortunately to date received less attention in the relevant literature.

First, while data availability has increased tremendously in the recent decades, which has caused a tremendous rise in the number of papers that use regionalized patent data, in contrast studies that utilize and offer insights based on the analysis of detailed publication data are much more scarce. Currently, the potential for publication data to be utilized in the analysis of local scientific capabilities, collaboration patterns, and their impact upon subsequent technological advancements, has barely been realized. The two contributions by Shin et al. (2023) and Tuncer and Gezici (2023) featured in this special issue make a significant strive forward on this initiative.

Second, while there are many studies focused on research collaborations that are based on questionnaires of the staff at universities and research institutions, there are much fewer studies that take into account the perspectives of various actors involved in knowledge transfer activities. The papers by Friedrich and Feser (2023) and Hertrich and Brenner (2024) in this issue use a qualitative approach to examine the collaboration patterns within regions including different actors. Qualitative approaches allow us to dig deeper into the motivation and methods of knowledge transfer and collaboration. More research in this domain will increase our understanding and build the basis for developing more effective policy approaches.

2 The science-technology-innovation helix—a regional policy perspective

The original idea that advancements in science and technology are mainly the result of recombinant knowledge production activities, which in turn drives innovative outcomes and associated returns, is quite dated (Schumpeter 1911). Nevertheless, the notion persists and contemporary and advanced studies into the Science-Technology-Innovation (STI) nexus highlight how novelty derives from new combinations of previously unconnected research disciplines and fields (Wagner et al. 2019), and that novelty is linked to impact and as such innovations that rely more heavily on novel scientific knowledge are also likely to have a higher impact and commercial value (Li et al. 2017). In parallel, another strand of the relevant literature has started to look further into the impact scientific advances have on inventions. Here, findings confirm that it is high-quality scientific works that provide essential knowledge inputs in patented inventions and that this matters in terms of value (Poege et al. 2019). Similar investigations further confirm that there is an increased reliance of patents on scientific knowledge inputs over time and again that this impacts on the value of a patented invention (Ahmadpoor and Jones 2017; Jefferson et al. 2018). Although the relevance of scientific knowledge externalities for technological change and resulting inventions seems undeniable (Feldman and Kogler 2010), what remains rather unknown is how to fully capture this science-technology nexus in the first place, and then how to measure it and provide relevant indicators of impact to inform policy-makers and practitioners in their quest to develop and employ effective policy actions (Shin et al. 2023).

Furthermore, the spatial range of effective knowledge externalities, how advancements in information and communication technologies, and perhaps even how recent developments in terms of generative AI might impact collaborative settings geared towards knowledge production, certainly demand further investigation into what might be possibly drastic systemic changes that are currently unfolding in the contemporary knowledge economy. The relevance of co-location and impact of geographic distance on the potential effective diffusion of valuable scientific knowledge, which serves as essential inputs into technological advancements and innovative outcomes, has not yet been examined in detail. While geographic distance is found to matter in principle (Boschma 2005) and in specific analyses (e.g., Abramovsky and Simpson 2011), Brenner and Schlump (2013) show that a general regional connection cannot be statistically proven for all kinds of technologies. This indicates that there are strong differences between technologies in how the science-technology nexus works and how much it depends on geographic proximity.

What complicates matters even more is the intrinsic nature of knowledge [production] itself, which is guided by complex interactions of actors at multiple levels, ranging from individuals to organizations and institutions, as well as the spatial and cognitive dimensions that are constrained and guided by evolutionary trajectories that significantly define the innovative potential of places (Kogler 2015; Kogler et al. 2023). At this intersection it is the realization that Science, Technology & Innovation (STI) policies are essentially place-based policies that need to be tailored to the present capabilities and potential future opportunities that define a place; something that reflects the rationale and thinking behind advanced STI policy actions such as the Smart Specialization Strategies (S3), which have been directed and deployed throughout European Union regions (Foray 2014, 2015, 2019).

In summary, taking into account recent theoretical and empirical advancements in this line of inquiry, it is possible to identify a number of essential aspects that deserve further attention and should be investigated in order to support STI policy initiatives in their quest to unleash the innovative potential that reside in respective regional settings. In particular, this includes:

  • A more detailed understanding of the different activities ongoing within technology transfer offices in universities and research institutions, such as patenting, licensing, and startup incubation, all of which facilitate the commercialization of scientific discoveries and, and how these depend on the related technology fields.

  • Examining whether open science practices, such as open-access publishing and data sharing, impact on the pace of scientific discovery and their use for innovative products.

  • Empirical evidence on how different incentives for collaboration between academia and industry, such as tax credits, grants, and facilitated intellectual property agreements, improve the transfer of scientific research results into practical applications and commercial products.

  • Acquiring further detailed knowledge around the impact of training and support programs that aim to cater towards scientists’ and researchers’ entrepreneurial skills that in turn will enable them to commercialize their innovations.

  • Insights concerning the impact of governmental programmes, specifically those supporting the interaction of innovative SMEs with universities and public research institutes within or outside the region.

  • A better understanding of how scientific research can be supported to create more science-industry interaction and the persuasion of more ambitious and long-lasting projects.

  • Further investigations into the importance of geographic proximity paired with other relevant relatedness dimensions, i.e., cognitive, social, and institutional proximities, for science-industry interactions, and their dependence and variance across technological fields.

3 Summary of contributions

In their article “Scientific collaborations within urban areas: the case of Istanbul”, Tuncer and Gezici (2023) investigate the effects of different types of collaborations in the context of spatial proximity between the universities in Istanbul. In recent years, there has been an emphasis on the importance of institutional and individual collaborations in scientific knowledge production. The fact that scientific research is becoming increasingly complex and competitive makes scientific cooperation at regional, national, and international levels both inevitable and necessary. The contribution multidimensionally analyzes the collaborations of scientists and researchers at the universities in Istanbul, which is considered the economic and scientific hub of Turkey. The number of universities and personnel has increased rapidly in Turkey since 2006, but there is a large literature gap on scientific collaborations for the purpose of producing scientific knowledge. Employing a gravity model to the distance between the universities, the study measures the intra-city co-authorship relationship of scientists from universities in Istanbul in six different scientific fields according to spatial proximity, domestic co-authorships, international co-authorships, institutional distance based on public-private university co-authorships, and the difference between the years of establishment. The findings of this study show that scientists in the fields of humanities and social sciences are prone to intra-city collaboration. In addition, in the fields of agricultural and veterinary sciences, engineering and technology, medical sciences, and natural sciences, domestic co-authorships outside Istanbul support intra-city scientific collaboration. Furthermore, when collaboration between scientists in public and private universities is considered there appears to be a lack of high levels of scientific collaboration. Finally, the differences in founding years of respective institutions does not seem to constitute an obstacle to collaboration. This study fills an important gap in the relevant literature while also providing insights that should inspire further research that focuses on intra-city collaborations.

In their contribution “What hampers research collaboration in a region?” Hertrich and Brenner (2024) examine the causes for the lack of research collaborations within German regions. They conduct interviews in ten German regions with various types of experts, including employees of firms, intermediaries and science. Independent of the regional conditions and the type of experts, a lack of research collaboration exists and is seen as a significant barrier to innovation. Interestingly, this holds even for regions with a large pool of potential cooperation partners. If large companies are missing in the region, this is named as the main reason for a lack of research collaboration. If large companies are present, other reasons, such as matching problems, resources and a lack of will are put forward by the various actors. Hence, the lack of research collaboration seems not to be driven fundamentally by the lack of partners. It is rather the actors that do not engage sufficiently in cooperation. In the case of research institutes, the lack of resources is mentioned as the main obstacle. For companies, a lack of will is often stated. This seems to be driven by the experience that cooperation is difficult due to cultural differences between companies and public research institutions. Furthermore, it is stated that more and less bureaucratic support from governments is necessary. In summary, the study highlights the differences between actors in the reasons for not engaging in regional research collaboration, which in turn points to the necessity that public support should consider these differences in the development of more effective public policy actions.

In their work “The Relevance of Scientific Knowledge Externalities for Technological Change and Resulting Innovation Citation Impact Across European Metropolitan Areas”, Shin et al. (2023) illustrate a novel attempt to quantitatively trace how knowledge externalities from science benefit the development of technologies by analyzing patent citation links to scientific publications developed in and across European metro-regions. These processes of knowledge exchange between scientific and technological spheres, which are likely to operate in rather asymmetrical patterns and levels of intensity, are considered highly relevant in the literature. Notwithstanding this, so far there has been a significant lack of empirical evidence and assessments that would reveal and disentangle the quantity and direction of knowledge spillovers between science and industrial complexes. The work contributes by providing insights into how the dynamic processes of knowledge development unfold in distinct spatial patterns. Specifically, the authors identify non-patent literature citations (NPL citations) in European Patent Office patent documents, link those to publication databases, i.e., Microsoft Academic Graph and Web of Science, then geocode inventors’ and authors’ residential and institutional addresses and allocate them to 218 metro-regions located across 17 European countries, and finally augment this regional scientific and technical knowledge database with regional indicators, e.g., population density, in order to capture agglomeration forces. In turn, Shin et al. investigate to what degree scientific knowledge externalities, found in patented inventions, derived from within a region, within a country, or elsewhere. Finally, the analysis then investigates the technological impact of respective regions, measured by patent forward citation, based on the degree to which regions actually source internally produced scientific knowledge. The findings indicate that regions with a higher share of intra-regional scientific knowledge inputs in the development of technology in turn also exert higher technological impact as measured by the citations these innovations receive. Assuming that it is likely that patented knowledge will exploit scientific knowledge derived from similar domains, it is then the regions that demonstrate high levels of expertise and competitiveness in both science as well as technology domains that seem to accomplish a higher level of technological advancement, which stresses the importance of scientific foundations for the development of regional technological capabilities. This also indicates the significant role played by scientific bases for technological progress, which in turn provides highly relevant insights towards science, technology and innovation policy initiatives that aim to strengthen ties across the science—technology divide.

The final contribution in this collection with the title “Combining knowledge bases for small wins in peripheral regions. An analysis of the role of innovation intermediaries in sustainability transitions” by Friedrich and Feser (2023) focuses on capturing processes for sustainability-oriented innovation at the regional level. Of particular interest here are the knowledge flows and networks that take place between intermediaries and their partners in the context of inter-organizational knowledge transfer mechanisms and processes. Applying a semi-structured interview approach, the main objective of the study is to investigate how the knowledge bases of a higher education institute, i.e., the Eberswalde University of Sustainable Development in Eastern Germany, are recombined in knowledge transfer activities that involve three other intermediaries working towards sustainability-oriented innovation. The main findings are as follows: 1) most actors that are involved in regional knowledge transfer processes, in the context of the study, are characterized by synthetic knowledge bases, which resonates with insights derived from other studies on peripheral regions; 2) symbolic knowledge plays an important role in terms of facilitating participatory communication among heterogenous actors, and in turn also enables a more active absorption of synthetic and analytical knowledge that might be more distant to some participants than others; and 3) that most innovations that derive from the knowledge flows and networks are incremental in nature. Overall, the study provides some highly relevant insights into knowledge production and appropriation processes and mechanisms in regional innovation systems, and in particular how such interactions between research and relevant stakeholders might feed into the development of tailored policy measures with the potential for initiating sustainability transitions.

4 Science/innovation nexus—future directions

The increasing availability and accessibility of patent data led to strong increases in scientific research on innovation activities based on patents over the last decades. At the moment we see an increasing availability of publication data as well as an increasing accessibility of information on the internet via web crawling. We can expect that the research on the connection between science and innovation will be enhanced and change significantly. In addition, this should also improve the possibility to directly link scientific and innovation related activities at the regional as well as at the organizational and individual level. Furthermore, other kinds of innovation activities, such as doing, using and interacting (DUI) modes of knowledge production (Jensen et al. 2007), that are not necessarily captured by scientific publications and patent documents, can now be examined in further detail using text-based analyses on web content. This offers many new options to study innovation activities beyond patent indicators, and to establish linkages between technological change and other economic or innovation related aspects. Semantic mapping and analysis of internet content will allow for inclusion of information on government strategies (at different levels), funding calls, policy documents or firm strategies in the examination of innovation activities. We are only at the onset of exploring these options in more detail. The use of artificial intelligence may further contribute to ample opportunities in this field. So far artificial intelligence has been mainly used to identify optimal solutions, which is of less interest for understanding economic processes. However, new tools based on artificial intelligence will allow us to structure information in texts and improve our handling of large text-based data (Kim et al. 2024). The future will show how this will improve our understanding of the connections between science and innovation.