Location‐Based Accessibility and Innovation Performance

ABSTRACT While the importance of local characteristics for innovation activities has been studied extensively, it remains largely unknown to which extent better transport‐based accessibilities facilitate innovation. This study builds on data from a Germany‐wide agent‐based transport model to derive local accessibilities for different modes of transport and accounting for road congestion. We employ these accessibilities to investigate their role in explaining variation in local innovation activities. Besides geographical information on inventive activity drawn from patent application data, which is traditionally employed as an indicator of inventive outcomes, we use a novel innovation indicator based on company's website texts. The results suggest that there are more inventive and more innovation activities in regions with better accessibility. The results also show considerable heterogeneity in the role of accessibility for young versus established and small versus large companies, as well as for firms active in different sectors. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on the geography of innovation and the development of measures for non‐technological innovation.