Unleashing Inventive Power - Solving cognitive, social and geographic distance issues with cultural proximity.

Abstract

Cognitive, social and geographic distances between collaborators impact the likelihood to succeed together. This paper argues that cultural proximity moderates this impact. While taking Boschma’s (2005) proximity concept as a point of departure, the informal part of institutional distance – cultural distance – is emphasized. Culture is defined following the concept of Hofstede et al. (2010), applying it one of the first times to the regional level. Results reveal that cultural proximity has different layers, all moderating the impact of cognitive, social and geographic distances. Out of the six investigated cultural distance layers, five moderate the impact of geographic distance, another five the one of social distance and four moderate the impact of cognitive distance.