Micro-geography of Interactions in the City: Interaction Patterns of KIBS in Montreal

Most of the research on industrial clusters and agglomeration economies has assumed that the patterns forged by co-location in a metropolitan area apply uniformly within that space. Much less attention has been dedicated to intra-metropolitan dynamics despite recent studies emphasizing their importance to understand inter-organizational transfers and interactions and research in economics uncovering an important distance decay in the intensity of agglomeration externalities. Using original survey data on ‘scientific and research and development service’ firms operating in Montreal, this study examines the relationship between intra-urban spatial density and knowledge exchange. We look more specifically at four different types of collaborators (clients, suppliers, university, and competitors), various channels through which firms exchange knowledge, and how the level of spatial density with other actors may correlate with specific forms of interactions. This paper contributes to the literature by highlighting how the intra-metropolitan scale matters to understand the patterns of knowledge exchange between organizations.