The paper investigates the diversified patterns of outsourcing in the Lombardy region and relates them to the probability of introducing product and process innovation. Based on a large firm-level survey, we show that outsourcing processes are strongly regionally embedded and that offshoring is still a limited phenomenon. Outsourcing strategies are shown to have a positive impact on firms’ innovation. In particular, the outsourcing of service activities contributes the most to innovation, thus suggesting that firms successfully pursue core strengthening strategies. Our econometric estimates show that both geographical and organizational proximity matter. Indeed, the positive association of services with innovation is strongly related to their regional dimension, which points toward the importance of local user-producer relationships. When outsourcing crosses national borders, keeping the outsourced activities at least loosely connected to the firm appears critical, as offshoring to non affiliated firms has a clear negative impact on innovation.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Did you know? You can create a compilation of all publications of a group of people, say alumni of a program, your students or memers of an association.