City and innovation: Different size,different strategy

The objective of this paper is to assess whether establishments' innovation performance and innovation strategies differ by the size of the city in which they are located. Using the Canadian 1999 Survey of Innovation database (establishment-based), it was found that the rate of innovation is not correlated with city-size, but when the innovation measure takes into account the importance of innovation, then the size of the city does matter. The results show that establishments belonging to smaller cities (with populations of less than 50,000) are less likely to be associated with a world-first innovation than those located in larger cities. Four innovation strategies have been retained—Private Source, R&D, Collaboration and Public Science Base paths—and the results show that the R&D path leads to the greatest increase in the estimated probability to be associated with a world-first innovation, for almost all sectors and all city sizes.