Science-industry interaction in the process of innovation:: the importance of boundary-crossing between systems

Applying recent theoretical concepts of social systems to innovation networks of firms leads to the presumption that linking firms to non-business systems stimulates innovativeness more than remaining within the business system's set of routines. Crossing the border to science, in particular, increases the diversity of firms' innovation partners and respective innovation stimuli which, in turn, improves the capability of firms to introduce more advanced innovations. This contention is supported by a statistical analysis using data from a research project on innovation systems in several European regions. The results demonstrate that partners from science are more important than the firms' customers for the introduction of products which are new to the market. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.