Page - (000339) - in Knowledge and Networks

337© The Author(s) 2017 J. Glückler et al. (eds.), Knowledge and Networks, Knowledge and Space 11, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45023-0_16 Chapter 16 The Coevolution of Innovative Ties, Proximity, and Competencies: Toward a Dynamic Approach to Innovation Cooperation Uwe Cantner, Susanne Hinzmann, and Tina Wolf The growing complexity and shortening of cycles inherent in the innovation process have changed the industrial and technological environment in which firms operate. The associated increase in uncertainty and costs accompanying R&D projects has shaped a landscape that favors collaboration (Hagedoorn, 2002). Especially in high- tech industries, where knowledge creation and accumulation is a crucial input factor and competition has become a learning race, joint research has steadily grown since the 1980s (Mowery, Oxley, & Silverman, 1996; Powell, 1998). A basic feature of joint research is the exchange and sharing of knowledge among the cooperation partners. Actors choose research cooperation in the expecta- tion that it will maximize their potential gain in knowledge. In this context several scholars have stressed the importance that similarity between cooperation partners has for knowledge transfer and successful collaboration. Similarity determines with whom one connects, for it creates trust, facilitates knowledge flows, and increases the mutual attractiveness of potential collaboration partners (Boschma, 2005; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001). Similarity or proximity in three dimen- sions—cognitive, social, and competence-related—seems to play a cardinal role in knowledge exchange in collaborations intended to generate innovation. These three dimensions are not simply exogenously given and static; they develop in the course of the partners’ collaboration. Continued collaboration even- tually leads trust, experience, and common understanding to increase and knowl- edge differences to decrease. These dynamics are expected to determine whether the U. Cantner • S. Hinzmann • T. Wolf (*) Department of Economics, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Carl-Zeiss-Straße 3, 07743 Jena, Germany e-mail: uwe.cantner@uni-jena.de; susanne.hinzmann@uni-jena.de; tina.wolf@uni-jena.de