Understanding the mechanisms for successful collaborative innovation projects in clusters: the role of architectural knowledge

Rani Dang () and Catherine Thomas ()
Additional contact information
Catherine Thomas: GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Innovation is increasingly viewed as a collective action, which involves heterogeneous actors that exchange and combine their knowledge. In this view, many studies focus on how clusters contexts facilitate the exchange of knowledge but we still know relatively little about how clusters facilitate the combination of knowledge among heterogeneous actors. The Combination process appears to be a critical point to foster successful knowledge integration that would conduct to innovation collaborations. This is the aim of this paper: explore the micro-mechanisms that explain how a cluster' structure can favours knowledge integration, with a specific focus on the combination process, and why these micro-mechanisms are critical for collaborative innovation projects to arise locally. Following a qualitative methodology (grounded theory) based on a case study research design we conducted a comparative study of two high-tech clusters in France: one in the microelectronics sector and one in the information and communication technology sector. An emergent-grounded model conceptualises the results, describing and explaining the mechanisms enhancing successful participation of clusters' members into collaborative innovation projects. The overarching result of our study is the discovery of architectural knowledge at the cluster level as an important underlying mechanism affecting the dynamics of knowledge integration in a cluster and enhancing its members' capacity to generate innovation projects. This study has implications on how scholars conceptualize territorial innovation by (1) enriching the concept of cluster-level architectural knowledge and (2) improving the understanding of the role of spatial proximity on collaborative innovation processes.

Keywords: Cluster; Innovation networks; Collaborative R&D Project; Architectural Knowledge; Regional development; Knowledge integration. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-05-31
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in EURAM, May 2016, Paris, France

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hal:journl:halshs-01311269

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().