The Occupational Mandate of an Innovation Intermediary: Influencing Innovation in the Digital Space

<div><div>It has long been accepted that innovative capacity plays a key role in long-term economic</div><div>prosperity (Krugman 1997; Moretti, 2012); it is also widely acknowledged that the outcomes</div><div>of knowledge-based activity are becoming spatially more polarised (Florida, 2005; McCann,</div><div>2008; Glaeser, 2011). This study investigates how an innovation intermediary - an</div><div>organisation whose remit is to broker relationships between “seekers” (of challenges or</div><div>problems, typically larger firms) and the “providers” (of ideas and potential solutions, SMEs,</div><div>freelancers, universities) in a “matchmaking” process. Moreover, the influence of these</div><div>innovation intermediaries is less understood in peripheral economies like Wales (the context</div><div>for this study) where the focus is typically on the direct technological outputs of SMEs, rather</div><div>than their potential contribution as facilitators of the innovation journey of their clients</div><div>(Morgan et al, 2020; Clifton et al, 2020)</div></div><div><br></div>