He purpose of it is to analyze the mutual impacts of KIBS and SMEs on their respective innovation capacities. According to my analysis, mainly there are the following four weaknesses and the methods for improvement are followed in each part.
Weakness 1—the discrepancy between researched objects and designated bodies in the hypothesis
In part 2.2, while researching the expansive effect of KIBS firms in core regions, the author used the research result from Wood(1998), which examines interactions between KIBS and their clients on different spatial levels and especially focus on large corporations instead of SMEs. This focus is inconsistent with the aim of the paper, to research the relationship between KIBS and SMEs. However, the writer still induced the conclusion from this part of the research that the interactions between KIBS and SMEs pay a crucial role in affecting the generation and diffusion of knowledge in metropolitan areas.
Recommendation
Empirical evidence from research papers which discussed the relationship between SMEs and KIBS should be considered, analyzed and included.
Weakness 2—multi-factors vs. single-factor in Empirical investigations—section 3.1
According to the data, though, 76.7% of SMEs that interacted with KIBS had innovative introductions during the researching period, these firms also had more cooperation with ITI firms and a higher cost on research, and development expenses. This means the factors influencing innovation at least include the above three. While ITI, KIBS, and expenses are all involved in SMEs’ innovation capabilities, it is hard to tell which factors determine which ones. Besides, there might be more factors influencing their innovation capabilities. Namely, the cause and effect relationship is hard to distinguish. But the author subjectively thinks it is the propensity to cooperate with KIBS that is linked with the likeliness of expanding investments in internal R&D.
Recommendation
More factors should be considered and included and a hypothesis analysis is recommended for getting the actual relationship among the all factors, namely to scientifically determine the cause and effect relationship by ticking out the irrelevant factors one after one.
Weakness 3—Too many unfiltered variables
In part 3.2, to analyze the mutual impacts of KIBS and SMEs on their respective innovation capacities, different areas surveyed in the research have different structures of sizes and forms of firms, including Alsace with a large number of both large firms and SMEs, Baden with lots of KIBS providers, Gironde with a dominant number of SMEs and foreign direct investments, etc. This is to say, except KIBS, too many factors are influencing the innovation capabilities of SMEs, such as foreign direct investments, the influence of firms in the same industry, etc. Therefore, it will likely produce an unconvincing result.
Recommendation:
Select the areas to be surveyed with the same overall environment, namely roughly the same distribution regarding the size, and types of firms. This practice serves to fix other variables so that only the factor that needs to be analyzed will be considered as the variable. Only by this way can the author get a better more relevant result.
Weakness 4—uneven numbers for small and medium firms in section 3.2
For the researched objects, the number of small firms (roughly 70) included, for example, in Table 6 is 2.5 times more than that of medium-sized ones. And in Tables 5, the number of small-sized firms is less than half of the middle-sized ones. Both can result in a distorted analysis result because of the uneven number of objects with two different features.
Recommendation:
Include a roughly even number of both small and medium firms for analytic purpose, as this will be more representative and convincing statistically.
