Geographical proximity and the diffusion of knowledge

In this paper we established a distinction between the various terms used to characterize clusters of firms. Once in the literature, we identified that the terms, Local Productive Arrangements (LPA) and Local Production Systems (LPS) are used interchangeably. However, these terminologies refer to different stages of development of territorial agglomerations of firms. In the same way, the agglomeration of businesses belonging to a same production chain in a particular region would not necessarily characterize an LPA or LPS. The aim of this paper was to demonstrate the need to combine methods and variables to draw a more accurate and comprehensive territorial productive situation allowing the classification of clusters according to their stage of development and institutional structure. For that purpose, the strength of cooperation between local professionals was considered as a major factor, which creates a competitive advantage that requires exogenous interests to make use of the endogenous capabilities strategically developed and cultivated.

Knowledge translation (KT) was traditionally framed as a problem of moving research results into policy and practice. The impetus for the flow of knowledge originated with researchers constructing new knowledge and seeing its utility, or with policymakers and administrators seeing problems in practice and looking to researchers for solutions. In the 1970s, a shift in focus away from knowledge use was exemplified by Caplan’s (1979) two-communities theory, which posits that researchers and policymakers comprise two different communities with two different languages (Jacobson, Butterill, & Goering, 2003). A shift back to knowledge use with a new focus on user-centered design is evident in more recent KT models that provide frameworks for researcher and user interaction in order to build better understanding between diverse groups. The flow of knowledge from its construction in one context to its use in another context has been variously termed knowledge translation, knowledge exchange, knowledge transfer, research transfer, technology transfer, knowledge transformation, knowledge dissemination, knowledge mobilization, knowledge utilization, and research utilization. The terms are often used synonymously, but a specific term is sometimes used because it highlights a particular component of the knowledge flow process. For example, knowledge exchange implies a sharing of information between partners of equal value and focuses on the movement of knowledge between them, whereas research utilization implies the transformation of research results into usable knowledge and focuses on embedding the usable knowledge in practice. Information technologies have the potential to support knowledge translation in powerful ways. Key processes in the translation of knowledge include: (1) knowledge creation, management, and dissemination; (2) recognition of links between existing knowledge and its potential application to problems or practice; (3) translation into usable knowledge in practice; and (4) change in practice. Information technologies are a natural solution for these knowledge translation processes. For example, group and social software such as blogs and wikis support collaborative construction and sharing of knowledge; knowledge management systems support capture, storage, accessibility, and maintenance of constructed knowledge; and most Internet-based technologies support dissemination of information. Well-designed virtual communities provide online environments for the kinds of human interaction that enable collaborative exploration of ideas, that foster recognition of potential links between existing knowledge and its application to solve problems or change practice, and that inspire people to transform their practice. Data mining and artificial intelligence techniques can be used to enhance identification of potential links between knowledge in one context and problems in another context.

Digital units and digital innovation: Balancing fluidity and stability for the Creation, Conversion, and Dissemination of sticky knowledge

The article performed a study of multiple cases that involved interviews with owners of three canteens of wine production, located in the region of “Quarta Colônia de Imigração Italiana”, central area of the Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil. This research aimed to analyze the influence of location, proximity and social relations in the processes of creation and transfer of local knowledge. It was conducted semi-structured interviews with owners of canteens, which are in the same municipality and in the same location, a few kilometers of each other. Results highlight that the geographical proximity per se is not sufficient for knowledge to be created, transmitted and maintained in a given locality. Particularly in the case of handicraft products such as wine, which involves a large portion of tacit knowledge, the establishment of social relations and family is a necessary condition for knowledge to be created, shared and saved. However, a series of problems have been observed and analyzed in the locality, which makes that knowledge restrained to some families and not maintained over time. As an example, wine production knowledge is essentially tacit and not codified; the indifference of younger generations regarding the knowledge base of the elderly; weak interactions and knowledge sharing among winemakers.

Geographic proximity, information flows and corporate innovation: Evidence from the high-speed rail construction in China

Today, knowledge has become dominant, creating a new dimension of the economy, a new society and a new employee. Knowledge workers have emerged as the core of a modern organisation’s staff, and their job is to convert information into knowledge. The process of diffusion of these key organisational players’ knowledge is critical, as it determines its availability to other employees. Both the character and importance of specialist knowledge diffusion require a detailed analysis of the process. Therefore, the main research goal of the study is to determine the conditions for this process in the IT sector. The method of triangulation was selected for this research. The procedure for obtaining empirical data consisted of three stages – direct semi-structured individual interviews, focus group online interviews (FIGO), a computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) and a computer-assisted web interview (CAWI-based DYI). Then, Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficient was used. It was found that knowledge workers are most likely to participate in the diffusion of high-context, personalised and tacit knowledge. Knowledge sharing is the subprocess of knowledge transfer, most conservatively approached by professionals who fear the uncontrolled transmission of their specific knowledge. Closed and conservative attitudes were clearly observed in the transmission of knowledge between staff (employees other than knowledge-workers) and stakeholders. They suggest the targeted or intuitive use of knowledge protection strategies, especially in inter-organisational cooperation relationships. The considerations presented contribute theoretically and practically to the diffusion of professional knowledge. They set a framework for designing the knowledge dispersion management subsystem as the chief element of the overall organisational knowledge management system, due to the subprocesses constituting knowledge transfer, the type of knowledge exchanged, and the group of knowledge agents involved in its circulation. Identifying critical conditions that support the knowledge diffusion of professionals could help practitioners create an effective system of knowledge transfer that meets knowledge workers’ requirements and stimulates the flow of the preferred types of knowledge in the planned and desired directions among selected groups of knowledge agents.

Innovation, entrepreneurship, the firm and industry evolution.- Innovation and the evolution of industries.- Entrepreneurship, evolution and the human mind.- Division of labor and division of knowledge: Why the nature of the causality matters for the evolutionary theory of the firm.- Entry of new firms and small firms.- Young firm growth in high-tech sectors: The role of founders' human capital.- Product entry in a fast growing industry: The LAN switch market.- Network externalities and networks of innovators.- Network effects and the choice of mobile phone operator.- Evolving networks of inventors.- Why do firms disclose knowledge and how does it matter?.- Innovation and competitiveness in local SMEs: Characteristics of firms, entrepreneurs, environment and their interrelationships.- Innovation and industrial transformation in various sectors.- New combinations in old industries: The introduction of radical innovations in tire manufacturing.- Fitness determinants in creative industries: A longitudinal study on the Hollywood film-making industry, 1992-2003.- The selection environment for gas to liquids technology and technological strategies: Challenging the natural trajectory.- Innovation and employment in Europe: A sectoral perspective.- Knowledge diffusion, spillovers and firm strategies.- A laboratory experiment of knowledge diffusion dynamics.- To innovate or to transfer?.- Dynamic gap bridging and realized gap set development: The strategic role of the firm in the coevolution of capability space and opportunity space.- Patents - patenting strategies and impacts of patents.- Innovation strategy and the patenting behavior of firms.- Effects of patenting behavior on corporate growth: A panel data analysis of German start-up firms.- Public Policy - competition policy and the patent system.- What's the aim for competition policy: Optimizing market structure or encouraging innovative behaviors?.- Social and technological efficiency of patent systems.

Analysis of influencing factors of knowledge dissemination and sharing based on the SEIRR model

Currently, all the world universities are becoming drivers for development of high technologies and business. In addition to performing traditional (educational and research) functions of creating new knowledge and building competencies, universities play a significant role in development of innovative ecosystems and entrepreneurship, and transfer of technologies they have created. In the context of glocalization, the importance of universities as drivers of innovative development is growing, and their functions are changing radically. Today, universities are not only the leading actors in creation, storage and dissemination of knowledge, but they are also turning into a kind of ‘technology brokers’. The universities are actively developing their third academic mission – the transfer of created innovations and technologies by providing services for business in the format of contract research; consulting, incubation and acceleration programmes; and formation and provision of platforms for information exchange and dissemination of knowledge.

Knowledge diffusion has prime importance for generation of new knowledge. The creation of new knowledge is not possible without referring or consulting the past work. Two very important potential flows related to knowledge diffusion can be observed in the common practice of researchers. First, in scientific research knowledge diffusion estimation using citation counts is generally used to establish the value of knowledge which inflates citations. Second the researchers use cited work to search the connected and related resources. Recently the social and collaborative phenomena termed as Web 2.0 has spurred new era of knowledge and information flow on the web. Its potential for the growth and diffusion of scientific knowledge has not been well explored. The emerging social and collaborative applications, such as tagging and bookmarking, are transforming the ways scientists and researchers organize their personal and collaborative information spaces. These bookmarking and tagging applications provide open data and rich metadata resources such as tags. Past research shows that the bookmarking and tagging can be used as a supplementary indicator for measuring research popularity and knowledge diffusion. However the current work exploits author keywords of scientific publications to link these resources with relevant tags extracted from a social bookmarking application such as CiteULike. This work compares, for a focus resource, the tags extracted from CiteULike based on author keywords with their corresponding tag cloud of CiteULike. The result shows that system extends the authors keyword set with social tags providing links to rich and focused resources in CiteULike. This also enhances the serendipitous discovery of emerging concepts related to the focused resource. Such a system may enhance the discovery of related and popular resources for researchers. This dataset has been made available publicly for scientific community.

This study evaluates the impact of the provision of long-term credit (LTC) on the growth of small and young firms in developing countries. The growth of firms is evaluated on the basis of employment growth and total sales. Credit provisions have also been collected from the short- and LTC extended to the private sector. This study uses data on firm levels from more than 19000 firms in 52 countries between 2006–2016. In order to avoid the endogeneity issues that usually occur in such studies, this study has implemented a cross-country model to evaluate the significance of total bank credit, both long- and short-term, on the growth of sales and employment. The econometric results indicate that the availability of short-term credit (STC) is more beneficial for the growth of the firms, i.e. STC was found to have a significant impact on employment growth and sales in small and young firms. Although positive, LTC seemed to have no significance in the growth of the small and young firms. This study suggests that the prime reason behind these results is the availability of long-term loans for small and young firms.

This chapter provides an overview of the main characteristics of micro, small and medium firms in the Brazilian national system of innovation as a basis to examine the Brazilian experience in the formulation and implementation of policies for these enterprises. Family businesses comprise a substantial part of Brazilian companies and have a significant role to play in the strength and dynamism of the economy. During the 20th century, industrialisation was strongly based on state support for the development of the productive structure of large firms, both national and foreign. The Local Productive Systems approach is particularly useful for understanding local processes of learning and capability accumulation. One of the most promising tendencies of new policies for Small and Medium Enterprises in Brazil from 2000 onwards is the collective treatment of small and medium firms in Local Productive Systems.

How large and small firms can grow together

Reading in Questions and Answers:The Catechism as an Educational Genre in Early Independent Spanish America Eugenia Roldán Vera Abstract In this essay I attempt to illuminate the relationship between a particular kind of book and its readers. Using the category of genre as a tool that allows me to bring together elements of textual analysis and empirical research of reading practices, I will study the ways in which a series of educational manuals of "useful knowledge" oriented readings and were actually read in early independent Spanish America. Published in London in the 1820s by Rudolph Ackermann for a Spanish American audience, these manuals were written in a question-and-answer form, by virtue of which they became widely known as "Ackermann's catechisms." I shall explore the question-and-answer form in its historical, discursive, and material dimensions in order to show how the category of literary genre can be useful to understand processes of transmission and appropriation of knowledge. After a brief overview of Ackermann's publishing enterprise for Spanish America, I will discuss how the category of genre may enable us to understand reading practices in general. Then I will consider the particular characteristics and evolution of the question-and-answer genre, in order to situate Ackermann's catechisms in the context of the expansion of elementary education in early nineteenth-century Britain and Spanish America. In the last part I explore the ways in which this genre shaped [End Page 17] actual practices of reading, learning, and use in the case of Ackermann's catechisms. Drawing on my broader interest in processes of transmission of European science in independent Spanish America, I will focus on the implications that these practices had in particular for the transmission and transformation of knowledge about nature and the natural sciences. Educating Spanish America In November 1825, the English teacher Richard Jones, recently settled in Mexico City, wrote a pessimistic letter to his father-in-law, the educator Joseph Lancaster, in which he commented on the state of Mexican society. After describing the street celebrations that followed the defeat of the last Spanish troops in the country, Jones lamented: This is certainly a very important thing for Mexico, they have nothing left now undone but to drive the grand enemies and the only ones remaining to the country—Ignorance and Superstition—the second of course will follow the first, and the first I fear will yet swallow up the liberty and conquer the country again if not speedy measures are taken to attack it with all the energy possible. . . . A few [laws] . . . and the diffusion of Mr. Ackermann['s] useful books throughout the country [are needed so that] the people in about one hundred years may become a different race, but it will be a difficult task to eradicate the prejudices and superstitions which have been augmenting for 300 years [of Spanish domination].—The present race must first become extinct, the entire mind must be transformed and they must be moulded anew.1 For the son-in-law of the founder of the monitorial system of education—of whose writing skills Professor Lancaster would not be too proud—the only way to consolidate the precarious political freedom of the new republic was education, in all its forms. He himself went to Mexico to work for the promotion of the monitorial system of education and spent the rest of his life doing that, as a teacher or as a government official. He was not isolated in his views about Mexican society: in fact, his politically incorrect statements were shared by many among the intellectual elites of the former colonies, who proclaimed that under the Spanish domination Spanish Americans had "had a very limited habit of thinking," and that they had made very little "active use of their mental faculties."2 The conviction that only education and the diffusion of knowledge would ensure moral and [End Page 18] material prosperity was widespread also among these groups. All possible means to contribute to this civilizing mission were therefore welcome; yet it is still curious that Jones conferred such quasi-redemptive power on Ackermann's books, by then a novelty in Mexico and in...

This study focuses on the impact of knowledge collaboration and knowledge spillovers on the innovative performance of Schumpeterian-type firms. Building on the innovation and entrepreneurship literatures, it first examines the innovation strategies used by highly-innovative firms, which can involve knowledge spillovers, knowledge collaborations or both. Secondly, it demonstrates how and why the relationship between knowledge flows and innovative performance changes with geographical proximity between knowledge-source and knowledge-recipient firms and across industries. External collaboration may bestow a significant advantage for innovation, such as helping to leverage the lack of knowledge and technology and teaching skills, but at a cost – the involuntary knowledge outflows to external partners. The results have relevant implications for the academic community, national and European policy-makers, and managers in highly-innovative firms who may want to rethink their innovation strategy.