Engineering relationships for innovation: concerning the feasibility of public policy interventions to engineer inter-firm

Regional development literature and policy has, in recent years, increasingly focused upon mechanisms for engendering inter-firm collaboration at a local level. Co-operation and partnership are regarded as key to encouraging endogenous innovation in the regions and thus to promoting balanced regional development. Using interview data from 30 companies located in one Irish regional agglomeration, this paper explores the feasibility of public policy interventions to engender inter-firm collaboration in the private sector. The interview data is used to chart the extensiveness and function of spontaneously forming inter-firm ties within the case-study agglomeration. The preconditions for these ties are explored and the relative attractiveness of local versus extra-local partners is given particular consideration. These issues are drawn together to inform the overall question regarding the potential for public policy to engineer such collaboration.