This paper examines the role of local resources (physical, human, immaterial, social and community, and financial) in shaping firm innovation and path development in rural areas. Existing research in spatially informed innovation studies has largely overlooked the place-specific resources of rural regions as innovation facilitating qualities. This paper addresses the following research questions: (i) what is the role of local rural resources in a firm’s innovation activities, and (ii) how do these resources shape regional development paths? We propose a framework that takes a holistic view of rural resources and their role in shaping innovation and regional development paths. The empirical analyses suggest that rural resources offer valuable and diverse opportunities for firm innovation, providing that firms (pro-)actively mobilize and purposefully exploit these resources as part of their innovation endeavors. We find that rural resources have the potential to extend and upgrade regional development paths and operate as ingredients to enrich existing paths with additional functions and, thereby, to make them more future-oriented. However, merely relying on rural resources does not suffice to facilitate substantial changes in regional paths. Our analyses are based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of firms located in rural Estonia, active in different manufacturing and service industries. This paper contributes to the emerging, but still fragmented, literature on rural innovation and offers a contextually grounded micro-level framework on the role of local rural resources for firm innovation in rural areas. Furthermore, the study adds an empirical contribution from a rarely studied Central and Eastern European regional context.

中文翻译：

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当地资源如何塑造农村地区的创新和道路发展。爱沙尼亚乡村的见解

本文研究了当地资源（物质，人力，非物质，社会和社区以及金融）在塑造农村地区企业创新和道路发展中的作用。空间知情型创新研究中的现有研究在很大程度上忽视了农村地区具有特定场所的资源，因为它们促进了创新。本文提出以下研究问题：（i）当地农村资源在企业创新活动中的作用是什么；（ii）这些资源如何塑造区域发展路径？我们提出了一个框架，该框架从整体上看待农村资源及其在塑造创新和区域发展路径中的作用。实证分析表明，农村资源为企业创新提供了宝贵而多样的机会，提供（积极）动员并有目的地利用这些资源作为创新努力的一部分。我们发现，农村资源具有扩展和升级区域发展路径的潜力，并且可以作为补充现有路径的附加功能，从而使其更加面向未来。但是，仅依靠农村资源不足以促进区域道路的重大变化。我们的分析基于对爱沙尼亚农村地区活跃于不同制造业和服务业的公司代表的半结构化访谈。本文为新兴的但仍然零散的关于农村创新的文献做出了贡献，并提供了一个基于上下文的微观框架，以了解当地农村资源对于农村地区企业创新的作用。