Networking as Multi-Purposed Tool for Innovative Organizations in Rural Areas

This paper builds on the findings of a survey to the innovative organizations located in Portuguese rural areas. This survey has been underlined and applied in the context of the project RUR@L INOV. The paper has two goals: to explore how networking is used by rural-based organizations and, second, to discuss how networking could be promoted by public policy to boost collaborative innovation. The evidence presented and discussed indicates that networking is used by rural-based innovators as a multi-purposed tool including the establishment of networks to obtain scale/scope effects and/or access local, mostly intangible, resources of rural areas. However, conventional innovation networks, usually led by R&D units or top-associations don't appear as a significant resource for most of the innovators. Probably, due to the organizations smallness, the high qualification of innovation leaders, together with their entrepreneurial attitude, these innovators search for knowledge and other resources by their own means and initiative. Nevertheless, this entrepreneurial attitude towards knowledge, information and skills demand could be shared by other, both existing organizations and new-entrants in the rural economies, through new networking models led by the innovators.