mean). The remaining LPS account for 22% of innovations generated in
Spain and their innovative intensity is below the national average.
Regarding the interpretation of the results by specialization, the
higher rates of per capita innovation are mainly related to manufacturing
specialization and to the business services LPS. Manufacturing
specializations concentrates 43.3% of innovations and have a rate of patents
per employee above the mean, where the most significant cases are
Machinery, electrical and optical equipment (376 innovations per million
employees), Textile and clothing (360), Chemistry and plastics (348), Leather
and footwear (343), and Housing goods (331) (Tables 1 and 2). The LPS
specialized in services concentrate 51% of the innovations. However, these
innovations are mainly concentrated in the LPS specialized in Business
Services (Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao), which have 33.5% of total
innovations and an innovative intensity (304 patents per million employees)
larger than the Spanish average.
The breaking down of the effects interacting specialization and
territory suggest that there is a strong correlation between the type of LPS
and their dominant specialization7. However, when there are several types of
LPS specialized in the same industry, the territorial dimension usually
overcomes the industrial one and strong evidence about the I-district effect
arises in six of nine manufacturing specializations.
Thus, in Food and beverages, industrial districts have 263
innovations per million employees while the other LPS are below 130; as a
result, the total performance of the sector is above the total mean for Spain.
In Chemistry and plastics the innovative intensity of industrial districts (454
innovations per million employees) is four times larger than the
manufacturing LPS of large firms (105). In Housing goods and in Textile and
clothing, the innovative intensity of industrial districts (341 and 372
respectively) is also twice that of the other LPS. On the other hand,
Manufacturing LPS of large firms show a clear superiority in Transport
equipment (281 innovations per million employees versus 126 in the
industrial districts), and better results in Machinery, electrical and optical
equipment (399 versus 341), as well as in Metal products (177 versus 112).
7 This was indeed expected because the procedure to divide the LPS by typology is
based on the characteristics of the industry in the territory.
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