Local scientific watch : measuring cooperation between actors and territories

Like firms, local authorities lead more and more an economic watch to better know their environment and to anticipate evolutions. In the knowledge economy, watch led by authorities concerns local innovation dynamics. The aim of this article is to present an approach based on local scientific watch, which allows to measure the scientific production of a given territory and to analyse research activities'organisation at a local level. This approach has been applied to the area of Saint-Etienne and allows us to better apprehend the geographical and organisational dimensions of the scientific cooperations in which local actors are implied.