Embeddedness and Connectedness in the Geography of Eco-Innovation
This paper aims to analyse the role of location in the eco-innovative behaviour of French companies according to their territorial anchoring linked to the nature of local externalities, and their connectivity, linked to the nature and location of cooperation partners. This dual dimension is particularly crucial for eco-innovations, which require more external sources of knowledge and information from heterogeneous sources than other innovations (De Marchi et al 2022). This refers to the two concepts of embeddedness and connectedness. Research is conducted on French industrial firms (CIS and DADS surveys) according to three dimensions: the nature of local externalities (specialisation, related variety, unrelated variety), the location of the firm (rural, urban or peri-urban areas), and the location of the eco-innovation partner (within or outside the territory). It highlights the diversity of forms of resource mobilisation depending on the nature of spaces and cooperation behaviours, reflecting a highly differentiated mobilisation of intra-and extra-territorial resources for eco-innovation depending on the type of location of the firm.