Academic-Capital

Product and service innovation is not something that occurs in a vacuum. It requires various connections throughout the market to obtain the information and ideas to create marketable products and services. Formal business connections, informal social connections, and formal research institutes all have a hand in the success of the firms around them. Fretas, et. al. (2011) discusses the complexity of these relationships and study which types of connections firms pick to achieve objectives in different types of companies. Industrial innovation can be seen as a process that involves the search for information and interaction with market actors such as customers, competitors, and suppliers or research institutions like universities or government to achieve their objectives (Salter and Martin, 2001). They develop several different types of formal and informal relationships to obtain the information they need to create dynamic interactions.    Prior research has found a relatio