Veturekapitalfinansiering av innovasjon

11other hand, facilitate knowledge exchange and contact betweeninvestors and developers.Urban locations are important when investors are seeking contact withentrepreneurs. Especially important is proximity to other venturecapital firms , networks and knowledge-intensive centres. Proximity toentrepreneurs, venues and R&D institutions plays a less prominentrole. That said, the entrepreneurs state that a presence in the mainurban centres does widen access to private venture capital, though itdiminishes the chances of obtaining government venture capital.Collocation with other players and institutions was not stressed.Location within an internal urban cluster is awarded varyingsignificance by the informants. Time costs associated with urbantravel do influence the venture capital firms’ choice of location. Littleimportance is attached to other costs. Costs related to contacts withventure capital firms do not affect entrepreneurs’ choice location in anurban environment.Connections with players in the immediate vicinity do affect decisionsof intra-city location. The venture capitalists stress, in particular,proximity to other venture capitalists and networks. This is the mostimportant method of achieving contact with entrepreneurs. From theentrepreneurs’ point of view, maintaining relations with venturecapitalists in the geographical vicinity is significant to an extent. Theplayers find information about investors, though it may notimmediately result in contact with venture capital firms.The informants made no mention of opportunities to observe andcompare themselves with central players spontaneously andautomatically. Observations from the field work do suggest, however,that collocated players do observe each other and make comparisons.While there is no empirical data to back this, support is found in partsof the literature on innovation and clusters.NIBR-rapport 2003:16