Innovation Networks and Clusters: The Knowledge BackboneIn Economics, networks are increasingly used to describe the many links created between independent companies, as well as between them and other institutions (universities, banks, venture capital, etc.). In the current global and knowledge-based economy, they can be characterised as knowledge factories and knowledge boosters. They feed the internal processes of innovation (collaborative innovation) or the external processes of innovation, created by the propagation effects that come from inter-firm collaboration. The book explains how innovation networks are at the origin of the production of new knowledge that will be transformed and used in common as well as in separated production processes. This characteristic of networks as knowledge factories gives incentives to further investment in the production of knowledge and ensures the cumulativeness of the innovation process. Some of the authors clearly take a territorial point of view and study how clusters (in different parts of the world: Europe, Eastern Asia and North America) propelled by the quality of the innovation networks they enclose, can be characterised as knowledge pools into which the local actors will be able to draw to reinforce their individual and collective competitiveness. This book also includes analyses of the quality of the networks built within clusters, which may help their identification. |
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actors approach Audretsch average Beaudry biotech biotechnology and nanotechnology biotechnology clusters Boutillier Canada Canadian biotechnology central centralisation chapter cliquish cluster analysis clusters and networks cognitive collaboration communities of practice companies competences competition components concept coordination create creation defined definition dynamics Economic Development Edmonton Edward Elgar emergence entrepreneur entrepreneurship epistemic communities evolution exports Feldman firm firm's geographical global Group guanxi Hamdouch high-tech identified IMPLAN industrial clusters innovation capability innovation clusters innovation networks innovation processes innovative milieu input-output model institutions interactions IPRs knowledge capital Laperche literature location quotients Montreal nanotech nanotechnology clusters nanotechnology inventors nanotechnology patents networked enterprise Nooteboom notion OECD organisation Ottawa patent pools Porter production property rights proximity PSRC Puget Sound Puget Sound Regional relations relationships Research Policy role Saskatoon scientific sectors Silicon Valley social network spatial specific strategy subnetworks theory tion Toronto Uzunidis Vancouver vertices