ABSTRACT
Over the past few decades, activities of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) can be interpreted as an important trend in the economic evolution of industrialised nations. KIBS firms are private sector companies that provide professional knowledge to other businesses and organisations. KIBS are key sources for information, consultation and professional knowledge, and have expanded tremendously during the past decade. This expansion demonstrates increased utilisation of KIBS, and that their importance to innovations across economic domains will also increase over time. This chapter attempts to link KIBS to the analytical structure of concepts, including regional innovation systems, knowledge exchanges and patterns of innovation. It investigates the role and function of KIBS in an innovation system. The chapter explores the evolution capacities of KIBS firms and their key influence factors by examining the interactions between these service firms and their clients and explores the interactive transformation associated with the different evolutionary stages of local industrial structure.
