Do Clusters Really Matter for Innovation Practices in Information Technology? Questioning the Significance of Technological Knowledge Spillovers

Franz Huber

No 10-21, DRUID Working Papers from DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies

Abstract: A widespread assumption in economic geography and the economics of innovation is that firms located in clusters benefit from territorial learning and knowledge spillovers. However, it remains unclear to what extent these benefits actually occur. This paper aims to address this issue and examines to what extent research and development (R&D) workers in the Cambridge Information Technology (IT) Cluster benefit from being located in the Cluster. The study shows why many do not believe that their work benefits from being located in the Cluster. The results suggest that academics as well as policy makers need to be more careful with the assumption of technological knowledge spillovers in innovative clusters. The significant advantages of the Cambridge IT Cluster seem to be of a different nature; in particular they concern labour market advantages and benefits from the global ‘brand’ of Cambridge.

Keywords: Clusters; Knowledge Spillovers; Territorial Learning; Agglomeration Economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 O18 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-geo, nep-ict, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-sbm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://wp.druid.dk/wp/20100021.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aal:abbswp:10-21

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DRUID Working Papers from DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Keld Laursen ().