Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 17
.
7
Internal and external relations in the network
co
sm
P1
P2
P1
P2
All
External
74
150
92
122
Internal
44
96
46
76
External/internal
1.682
1.563
2.000
1.605
Private
External
61
86
69
94
Internal
37
54
33
54
External/internal
1.649
1.593
2.091
1.741
Public
External
13
64
23
28
Internal
7
42
13
22
External/internal
1.857
1.524
1.769
1.273
Non- permanent
External
54
107
47
71
Internal
28
50
24
30
External/internal
1.929
2.140
1.958
2.367
Permanent
External
20
43
45
51
Internal
16
46
22
46
External/internal
1.250
0.935
2.045
1.109
the large Carl-Zeiss combine. During the transformation process after German unii ca-
tion, this combine was split and many workers were laid of at the beginning of the 1990s.
This generation of workers was socialized in the Carl-Zeiss combine and newly founded
i rms recruited workers who had close contacts with each other because of their common
history and past collaboration. This common heritage is of decreasing importance for
i rms that were founded later on and for which local labour was not as abundantly
available as before. With this in mind, an increasing outward orientation of the entering
actors has to be seen as a natural development of a system in transformation.
Second, the permanent innovators increasingly focus on internal relations; Table
17.7 shows that this is especially true for linkages through mobility, where internal rela-
tions more than double from P1 to P2. One of the reasons for this development might
be initiatives to foster academic start-ups and a culture of entrepreneurship in general
during that period. Scientists and engineers who have been working for large employers
in the region and founded new i rms or work in these new establishments could account
for that increased mobility. In addition, for incumbents the new establishments provide
increasing possibilities for knowledge exchange not only as the system grows, but also as
the technological orientation of these new actors is more in line with the competencies
of incumbents.
Summarizing these results we i nd that even though the share of external actors in
the Jena network of innovators increased slightly over time, linkages within the region
enlarged their share. This tendency is especially true for public actors, but applies to
