Regional entrepreneurship and innovation in Chile: a knowledge matching approach

This paper presents a model of regional innovation based on the matching of research and entrepreneurial skills. We provide a method of empirically testing the model using a dynamic knowledge matching (KM) function, which is applied to data on patent applications and new firms in Chilean municipalities for the period 2002–2008. The estimations confirm the explanatory power of the KM mechanism regarding the spatial variation of innovation in the country, a result that is largely robust to the consideration of other main hypotheses of regional innovation. This evidence warrants further consideration of the spatial dimension of innovation in the country. It also suggests that there are unexploited synergies to be had between support policies for innovation and support policies for entrepreneurship in the context of regional development initiatives.