Protocolos de coherencia de caché

One explanation of how the development of new innovations produces growth in clustered industries is that within clusters there are greater knowledge spillovers between firms.77

Knowledge can be regarded as having many of the properties of a public good, notably that it is non-rival in consumption and, relatively speaking, it is non-excludable. This ‘publicness’ by itself means developments in knowledge (and innovations) are likely to have spillover effects, with benefits accruing to others besides the creators. The benefit of clusters is that as firms are

75

Swann, et al, Dynamics, pp. 63-4.

76 _{Porter, Competitive advantage.}

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located in close proximity, ideas can flow more easily between them: ‘intellectual breakthroughs … cross hallways and streets more easily than oceans and continents.’78

Knowledge, however, does not just enter the ether ready to be tapped by anyone, or, like a radio transmission, ready to be picked up by all with receivers. It needs to be communicated between members of different firms. There is, therefore, a more fundamental condition for knowledge to be spread: it is that it requires a network of linkages between firms to act as a channel through which the knowledge and information can pass from person to person. This has been

demonstrated clearly in Saxenian’s comparative study of the US computer and electronics industry in Silicon Valley and along Route 128 (near Boston, Massachusetts).79

In the 1970s both districts were locations for leading firms in the innovative electronics sector, with Silicon Valley specialising in semiconductors (memory chips) and Route 128 a cluster of minicomputer companies. By the early 1980s each had begun to suffer from competition from overseas and new products. In semiconductors Japanese firms had made substantial inroads into the standardised mass-produced chip market, and the route 128 firms saw the minicomputer market decline in the face of competition from the newly developed personal computer. At this point there was a clear contrast in the development of the two regions. In Silicon Valley both start-up businesses and the existing firms developed new high-technology products including specialised, as opposed to standardised, chips, and other computer hardware and software. As a result the district continued to grow and prosper. Route 128 on the other hand, while remaining an important centre for the computer industry, lost its advantage and leadership in terms of the number and size of firms, employment and technological innovations, not only to the

Californian centre of the industry, but to other developing districts ( e.g. Austin, Texas).

Saxenian has explained this differing experience by reference to the contrasting industrial structures of the two districts. In Route 128 the industry was dominated by a small number of large integrated companies in which secrecy, loyalty and self-reliance were emphasised. Information tended to flow vertically within organisations and therefore the extent to which knowledge spillovers could generate and spread new innovations outside the main businesses was severely limited. Ultimately this reduced the dynamism and flexibility both of the firms and the whole district. In contrast to this ‘firm-based’ industrial system, Saxenian suggests that in the late 1980s and early 1990s Silicon Valley had a ‘regional network-based’ industrial

78 _{Glaeser et al, ‘Growth’, p. 1127.}

79 _{A-L Saxenian, ‘Regional networks and the resurgence of Silicon Valley’, California Management}

Review, 33 (1990), pp. 89-112; A-L Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge Ma, 1994).

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system. There were a much larger number of independent specialist firms and even though some were sizeable, or later grew large, there was in general an absence of vertical integration. Instead businesses operated by subcontracting work through networks of interconnected but independent firms. This provided competition – for contracts – but also encouraged cooperation as information for product specifications and the like had to be shared. Moreover, the linkages between firms were reinforced by a high degree of horizontal communication, with companies tied together by teams of innovators and entrepreneurs drawn from the different businesses. The rapid turnover of skilled workers and the high rate of new firm creation, as entrepreneur- innovators with novel ideas left one company to establish their own businesses, also added to the inter-firm linkages as did what Saxenian calls the ‘dense social groupings’ in the district. The effect was to create a highly flexible industrial system that could not only produce a great number of innovations, but which could also incorporate these quickly into products and processes ready for commercial exploitation. For these reasons the firms in Silicon Valley were able to adapt to changing outside pressures and reinvigorate the growth of the cluster.

In short, it is the flexibility of the business networks that enabled Silicon Valley to maintain its competitive advantage and technological leadership. Similar explanations have been given for the persistence of a number of industrial clusters in continental Europe, including France (mechanical engineering in Lyon), and northern Italy (Prato and Biella: textiles; Bologna: packaging machinery; Sassuolo: ceramic tiles).80 As with Silicon Valley, these districts all have a large number of specialised, often small, vertically linked firms between which there is considerable degree of subcontracting. As well as formal contracts, much subcontracting work is undertaken on the basis of informal agreements that are based on mutual trust built up over time by repeated contact between businesses. It is also is supported by strong networks of business and social institutions to which employers and employees, and their families, all belong, giving rise to the business relationships being ‘embedded’ in the Granovetter sense in the social structure of the district. The effect is to create a common business language and purpose in the district and hence improve efficiency and cooperation.

Business networks, however, are important not only for maintaining the effective operation of an existing cluster, as in the European examples, or for the revivification of a mature one. They

80

B. Harrison, ‘Industrial districts: old wine in new bottles?’, Regional Studies, 25 (1992), pp. 469-83; M.J. Enright, ‘Regional clusters and firm strategy’, in A.D. Chandler, P. Hagström, and O. Sövell, (eds.) The Dynamic Firm: The Role of Technology, Strategy, Organisation and Regions (Oxford, 1992); E. Lorenz, ‘Neither friends nor strangers: informal networks of subcontracting in French industry’ in D. Gambetta (ed.), Trust: Making and Breaking Co-operative Relations (Oxford, 1988); G. Becattini, ‘The Marshallian industrial district as a socio-economic notion’, in F. Pyke and G. Becattini (eds.), Industrial Districts and Inter-Firm Co-operation in Italy (Geneva, 1990).

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also play a crucial part in the early stages of cluster development. Indeed, there are close similarities between the critical mass to take-off stage and the process of renewal. As noted above, diversification is central to the acceleration of growth in a cluster, even when it is within a fairly narrow range of goods and services that are closely related to the main industry. But in the same way that knowledge spillovers are not ‘in the air’, information about business

opportunities offered by the process of diversification in a growing cluster need to be communicated through some channel. This is done through the linkages between businesses and entrepreneurs, that is, through business networks. It is only as a result of some form of inter-personal communication that information can be transmitted and economic activity organised and coordinated. Information may be communicated to those currently outside the industry, attracting new entrants into a growing industrial district, or between insiders to stimulate new investment, facilitating the founding of new firms, joint ventures, and re- combinations of existing firms and entrepreneurs. And as well as providing resources for existing firms to expand, the networks will be the means for promoting the development of user and supplier industries and the development of spin-off activities. There is also a need to provide the collective physical infrastructure assets that are useful to all firms. Where these are not supplied collectively by public funds, but as privately owned and financed ventures, then there will be strong incentives for the suppliers to maximise their use. One way to do this is to use contacts through business networks to attract new firms and hence encourage the

development of the industrial cluster since the more intensively fixed assets are used, the greater the returns.

2.7 Conclusions

Locational advantages may explain the initial siting of an activity and agglomeration economies how cumulative growth is produced in clustered industries, but they do not explain all the processes and mechanisms behind the industrialisation of a previously economically

undeveloped area. There needs to be some means through which new firms are attracted into a district and the resources for investment made available, either by being brought in from outside or developed locally. This process operates through business networks, the links between entrepreneurs through which signals and incentives for new business opportunities are sent. As part of the process there is a powerful incentive for existing businesses to use their network of contacts to attract new entrants in order to maximise the utilisation of the existing infrastructure, to develop the industrial sector further by providing suppliers of inputs and users of outputs, and to take advantage of innovations and spin-off activities. A model to show how the interaction between networks, information and trust can promote development, and how feedback effects

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arise as a result of growing investment opportunities, more extensive network connections and the development of supporting institutions is outlined in Figure 2.3 (p. 36). These feedback effects support the clustering process to stimulate further expansion.

Although the claims for the importance of networks should not be over emphasised, they provide more than a descriptive tool for illustrating the details of economic development. By documenting and assessing the inter-connections between entrepreneurs, investors and their business, it is possible to use networks as an analytical framework that can help uncover both why development took place and the form it took. In the next chapter this is applied to the early growth of the Cleveland iron industry.

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Chapter 3: Networks and the Development of the Cleveland Iron Industry Cluster, 1850 to