Configurations of inter-organizational knowledge links: Does spatial embeddedness still matter?

International audience The actor composition of interorganizational ego-networks is largely ignored in research on Territorial Innovation Models (TIMs) despite the fact that there is strong evidence that the contributions of different actors to innovation differs. To fill this gap, we explore with which sets of external actors (i.e. with which configurations) innovating South African firms maintain interorganizational knowledge links. Subsequently, we analyze the differences in innovative performance between firms engaged in different configurations taking their geographical dimensions into account as well. Five configurations emerged, four of which have positive effects, albeit of different magnitude, on a firm's innovative performance in comparison to the 'go-at-it-alone' configuration. After controlling for actor composition and tie depth, however, their geographical composition is found to be unrelated to the innovative performance of firms.