Mapping Regional and Sectoral Characteristics of Knowledge-Intensive Business Services: Evidence from the Province of Quebec (Canada) DAVID DOLOREUX, NABIL AMARA,AND RÉJEAN LANDRY ABSTRACT The study presents original evidence on the characteristic features and innovation activities of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). Based on a wide-scale survey of 1,124 KIBS firms in Quebec (Canada), we explore empirically the extent to which KIBS from various sectors and regions differ in their characteristics and their uses of innovation practices. The results from the sectoral analysis reveal that KIBS display different characteristic features and innovation behaviours across sectors, thus suggesting that inter-sectoral differences are important when explaining innovation activities in KIBS. The comparison between KIBS in large, medium, central, and resource regions shows that the characteristic features and the innovativeness of KIBS are rather similar, and little or no significant statistical differences were found between the different regions in the province of Quebec. Thus, overall, the results of our study seem to suggest that a location does not tend to make a difference in respect to characteristic features and innovation performance of KIBS. Introduction R ecently, an increasing proportion of research on innovation—which has previously tended to focus on manufacturing firms—is now turning its attention to the determinants of innovation in knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) and, more David Doloreux is an associate professor at theTelfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa; Director of the Research Chair on innovation, entrepreneurship, and regional development; and research fellow at the Fraunhofer Institute Systems and Innovation Research. His e-mail address is: doloreux@telfer.uottawa.ca. Nabil Amara is an associate professor in the Department of Management at Laval University, and Co-director of the CHSRF/CIHR Chair on KnowledgeTransfer and Innovation. His e-mail address is: nabil.amara@mng.ulaval.ca. Réjean Landry is a professor in the Department of Management at Laval University, and Director of the CHSRF/CIHR Chair on Knowledge Transfer and Innovation. His email address is: rejean.landry@mng.ulaval.ca. The authors would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for the financial support for this research (SSHRC grant number 410-2005-0501). Comments and suggestions by Mark Freel and Richard Shearmur, and three anonymous reviewers are greatly acknowledged. The usual disclaimers apply. Growth and Change Vol. 39 No. 3 (September 2008), pp. 464–496 Submitted September 2007; revised December 2007; accepted January 2008. © 2008 Copyright the Authors Journal compilation © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.