Regional development, innovation systems and service companies' performance

This paper examines the impact of firm-level research and development (R&D) and country-level innovation on the relationship between geographic scope and financial performance. Using econometric estimation to analyze data from a sample of 339 United Kingdom (UK) service companies over the period from 2011 to 2017, we found a concave relationship between geographic scope and financial performance. Moreover, the results indicated that UK service companies that increase their R&D expenditure accrue a higher performance from higher geographic scope. This is because the relationship becomes convex but the foreign country’s innovation has no direct effect on UK service companies’ performance. Additional results showed that performance differences from geographic scope and the influence of firm-level R&D and country-level innovation exist between SMEs and large firms, and between private and public firms.