Knowledge creation and diffusion in specialized environments: what are the factors involved?
| Autor | Bartolomé Marco Lajara/Eduardo Sánchez García/Pedro Seva Larrosa/Javier Martínez Falcó |
| Cargo del Autor | Universidad de Alicante/Universidad de Alicante/Universidad de Alicante/Universidad de Alicante |
| Páginas | 432-459 |
432
CAPÍTULO 20
KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND DIFFUSION IN
SPECIALIZED ENVIRONMENTS:
WHAT ARE THE FACTORS INVOLVED?
BARTOLOMÉ MARCO LAJARA
Universidad de Alicante
EDUARDO SÁNCHEZ GARCÍA
Universidad de Alicante
PEDRO SEVA LARROSA
Universidad de Alicante
JAVIER MARTÍNEZ FALCÓ
Universidad de Alicante
1. INTRODUCTION
The current business environment is highly turbulent. The accelerated
development of new technologies, the lowering of governmental barri-
ers to global trade and the development of the international logistics
sector have opened the doors to a wide range of new markets for com-
panies. While this fact brings endless opportunities for organizations, it
also entails numerous threats. In this regard, the knowledge held by
companies is a strategic factor that can help them to take advantage of
the opportunities that arise at any given moment, as well as the devel-
opment of strategies to avoid or reduce the impact of existing threats.
As a result, for decades, researchers have been trying to determine
which tools are available to companies that favor the creation, access
and exploitation of knowledge from the environment, and boost their
innovative performance and competitiveness.
In this line, due to their current relevance, both in the professional and
academic spheres, it is worth highlighting the figure of industrial clus-
ters. These are specialized environments in which a wide range of
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positive externalities are generated for companies. The analysis of the
effects of the territorial agglomeration of companies goes back to the
works of the British economist Alfred Marshall, developed at the end
of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, who was critical
of the factory system, and developed the theory of territorial agglomer-
ation of SMEs in specific socio-economic contexts, specialized in the
different phases of the productive process of their main industry ("Mar-
shall industrial district").
Since then, and especially in the last decades, localization as a funda-
mental factor for the industrial and socio-economic development of re-
gions has been analyzed by several relevant authors, who have devel-
oped different models and theories regarding the territorial agglomera-
tion of companies and regional development, establishing different
concepts in this respect: "Milieuinnovateur" (Aydalot, 1986), "Cluster"
(Porter, 1990), "Local productive system" (Storper and Harrison,
1991), "Hot Spots" (Pouder and St. Gallen, 1995), "Local production
system" (Aydalot, 1996), "Local development" (Porter, 1997), "Local
development" (Pouder and St. Gallen, 1998), "Local development"
(Aydalot, 1998) and "Local development" (Porter, 1999). John, 1996),
although the most widely accepted concept, and which encompasses
practically all the different types of territorial agglomerations, is the
"cluster".
However, belonging to this type of specialized environment does not
automatically imply the effective exploitation of its positive externali-
ties. It is necessary to pay attention to those internal characteristics of
firms that allow them to maximize the benefits of belonging to a cluster,
especially in relation to factors linked to knowledge. In this regard, the
ability of firms to absorb new knowledge plays a fundamental role in
the development of innovations (Xie et al., 2018), and allows them to
adjust their processes to meet demand requirements and create value
(De Silva et al., 2018). Because of this, the ability of firms to absorb
new knowledge arises as a potentially valuable tool for firms to take
full advantage of their membership in this type of specialized environ-
ments.
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