Quantifying the brokerage power of Swedish innovation agencies, 1970-2021

Collaborative innovation has emerged as a way to share risks and costs associated with the innovation process. However, identifying and establishing contact with suitable collaboration partners proves challenging. To overcome this barrier, knowledge brokers, such as innovation agencies or universities, can step in to bridge contacts between innovative firms. This paper provides a long-term case study, estimating the brokerage power of Swedish innovation agencies using indicators from social network analysis. Additionally, the paper addresses the question whether collaborations involving innovation agencies differ from those established in their absence, based on a probabilistic regression model. To the author’s best knowledge, this study provides the first quantitative assessment of the brokerage power of an innovation agency. Sweden is of particular interest because it ranks among the world’s most innovative countries and was among the first to establish a second-generation innovation agency focused on promoting applied research. Data for the analysis is obtained from SWINNO, a database of significant Swedish innovations (1970–2021), which has been linked to a database over public innovation funding in Sweden (1968–2023). The sample consists of 1,392 innovative firms that engage in the development of collaborative innovations. Two dimensions of innovation agency involvement are considered: (1) direct provision of public funding, and (2) knowledge exchange through public funding applications. The results reveal that Swedish innovation agencies yield substantial brokerage power, being in direct contact with 40-70% of innovative firms, and intermediaries for 40-80% of potential collaborators. Moreover, collaborations brokered by innovation agencies are more likely to be associated with the emergence of local clusters, collaborations between firms differing in public ownership and initial contacts. Although the study does not directly identify network additionality, the results suggest that innovation agency involvement is associated with the formation of otherwise unlikely partnerships.