Innovation is widely recognised as essential to the modern economy. The term knowledgebased innovation system has been used to refer to innovation systems which recognise the importance of an economy’s knowledge base and the efficient interactions between important actors from the different sectors of society. Such interactions are thought to enable greater innovation by the system as a whole. Whilst it may not be possible to fully understand all the complex relationships involved within knowledge-based innovation systems, within the field of informetrics bibliometric methodologies have emerged that allows us to analyse some of the relationships that contribute to the innovation process. However, due to the limitations in traditional bibliometric sources it is important to investigate new potential sources of information. The web is one such source. This thesis documents an investigation into the potential of the web to provide information about knowledge-based innovation systems in the United Kingdom. Within this thesis the link analysis methodologies that have previously been successfully applied to investigations of the academic community (Thelwall, 2004a) are applied to organisations from different sections of society to determine whether link analysis of the web can provide a new source of information about knowledge-based innovation systems in the UK. This study makes the case that data may be collected ethically to provide information about the interconnections between web sites of various different sizes and from within different sectors of society, that there are significant differences in the linking practices of web sites within different sectors, and that reciprocal links provide a better indication of collaboration than uni-directional web links. Most importantly the study shows that the web provides new information about the relationships between organisations, rather than just a repetition of the same information from an alternative source. Whilst the study has shown that there is a lot of potential for the web as a source of information on knowledge-based innovation systems, the same richness that makes it such a potentially useful source makes applications of large scale studies very labour intensive.

L’objet de cette thèse est l’analyse de l’innovation à partir des connaissances autour de l’approche Knowledge-Based Innovation (KBI) qui décrit l’innovation à travers le prisme de la connaissance. L’innovation s’apparente, foncièrement, à un processus de création, d’application et de diffusion de différents types de connaissances. Cette recherche se focalise sur la phase cognitive de l’innovation dont l’ancrage choisi a été celui d’une approche par les capacités. Nous cherchons alors à identifier les capacités organisationnelles qui sous-tendent l’innovation en amont et à expliquer comment ces capacités s’articulent pour favoriser l’innovation à partir des connaissances. A la lumière des développements théoriques effectués, nous avons élaboré notre modèle conceptuel de recherche qui consacre le rôle médiateur de la capacité d’absorption.La démarche méthodologique appliquée est qualimétrique. Deux études empiriques ont été menées. La première est qualitative, basée sur des entretiens exploratoires. Elle a permis, dans un premier temps, de décrire et d’illustrer les relations étudiées, et dans un second temps, d’affiner nos interrogations et de les enrichir par deux nouvelles propositions de recherche. La deuxième étude est quantitative. Elle s’est basée sur l’administration du questionnaire conçu, à des entreprises françaises œuvrant majoritairement dans le secteur industriel. Cette étude, basée sur la méthode des équations structurelles, a validé globalement le modèle développé en affirmant la médiation partielle de la capacité d’absorption, mais elle a rejeté, toutefois, l’existence de relations entre les investissements en R&D et la capacité d’absorption. / The purpose of this thesis is the analysis of the Knowledge-Based Innovation (KBI) which describes innovation through the prism of knowledge approach. Innovation seems essentially like a process of creation, application and dissemination of different types of knowledge. This research focuses on the cognitive phase of innovation explained according to a capability approach. We seek to identify organizational capabilities that sustain innovation and to explain how these capabilities are linked to promote innovation based on knowledge. We developed then a conceptual model that establishes the mediating role of absorptive capacity.Our methodology is based on two empirical studies. The first is qualitative, based on exploratory interviews. It enabled to illustrate the studied relationships, to refine our questions and to enrich the conceptual model with two new research proposals. The second study is quantitative. It is based on the administration of the questionnaire designed for French companies which operate mainly in the industrial sector. This study, based on a structural equation method, validated the overall developed model. It asserted the partial mediation of the absorption capacity. However the existence of relationships between investment in R&D and absorptive capacity was rejected