In this paper, we model the formation of innovation networks as they emerge from bilateral decisions. In contrast to much of the literature, here firms only consider knowledge production, and not network issues, when deciding on partners. Thus, we focus attention on the effects of the knowledge and information regime on network formation. The effectiveness of a bilateral collaboration is determined by cognitive, relational, and structural embeddedness. Innovation results from the recombination of knowledge held by the partners to the collaboration, and its success is determined in part by the extent to which firms' knowledge complement each other. Previous collaborations (relational embeddedness) increase the probability of a successful collaboration, as does information gained from common third parties (structural embeddedness). Repeated alliance formation creates a network. Two features are central to the innovation process: how firms pool their knowledge resources, and how firms derive information about potential partners. When innovation is decomposable into separate subtasks, networks tend to be dense; when structural embeddedness is important, networks become cliquish. For some regions in this parameter space, small worlds emerge.networks, innovation, knowledge, collaborative R& D, embeddedness
In this paper a model for the formation of strategic alliances is studied. Innovation results from the recombination of knowledge held by the partners to the collaboration, and from the history of their collaboration. Innovation brings partners closer together, while at the same time the repetition of partnerships fosters trust and helps improving the outcome of each round of cooperation. A tension exists between innovating with people I know in order to reduce uncertainty at the expense of the net benefit from our joint effort, and innovating with strangers with whom the outcome of joint innovation can be greater but at a larger risk of failure. This "organized proximity", built through the experience of cooperation, can be at the origin of strongly structured networks of innovation, where agents' relations focus on limited cliques of partners. JEL Classification: L14, Z13, O3
Abstract. -The aim of this paper is the presentation of an approach of firms-territories relationships in terms of firms' nomadism and territorial anchorage of technological and industrial activities. Such an approach is founded on the necessity to overcome the "volatile" firm's level of analysis, in which firm's mobility is investigated from the sole point of view of the leaven location. On the contrary, it should be relevant to focus on the firm's dynamics through its connections with the whole set of territories and to conceive the firm-territory relation as a result of the dialectic confrontation of the respectively concerned firm and territory both dynamics, both trajectories. Hence we are led to characterise the localised industrial unit as placed at the crossroad of a triple link: with a firm (or a group), with an industry and with a territory. Such a threefold coupling relies on proximity's effects, alternately from organisational and geographical nature, whose conjunction generates territorial anchoring and leads to the notion of productive encounter, in the sense of a capacity to formulate and give solutions to productive issues, within the context of firm-territory relationship. In terms of formal models, research works are at the very first step. Nevertheless, an approach in terms of "small worlds" seems to present very fruitful perspectives. We develop the foundations of such an approach and expose how it can provide a good framework to explain territorial anchorage and, more widely, the strength of clusters. A concrete illustration is extensively developed about SGS-Thomson Microelectronics group with regard to its productive site in Rousset, in the French Bouches-du-Rhône district.Classification Codes: L23, L63, O18, R3, R58.
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