In regional innovation systems (RIS), there is a need to identify the knowledge bases that firms draw upon and differentiate innovation policies accordingly. From this premise, the main aim of this paper is to compare two Finnish industries, intelligent machinery and digital content services, that draw upon different kinds of knowledge bases. The three main research questions discussed here are as follows: (a) do knowledge sources of the firms representing two different industries with two different knowledge bases differ from each other, and how; (b) how do the knowledge sources differ between different types of RIS and (c) what kind of extra-regional pipelines do the three different cases have? The RIS under scrutiny represent fragmented metropolitan (Helsinki metropolitan area), old industrial (Tampere region) and organizationally thin (South Ostrobothnia) RIS.
