Knowledge networks of young innovators in the urban economy: biotechnology as a case study

Abstract

The paper explores how young innovative companies shape knowledge networks in seizing local and global opportunities of learning. The perspective used in the paper is derived from management and business literature, that is, knowledge networking is perceived as based upon choices following from strategies and networking capabilities. The empirical part makes use of a small sample of urban innovators in the Netherlands and of rough set analysis as a relatively new way of revealing ‘causal' relations. The paper reports that local/regional and global networks tend to coexist in clusters, and that this pattern follows from particular organizational capabilities derived from the company of origin and particular strategies in building customer and supplier relationships. An in-depth study of a biotechnology cluster supports the idea of coexistence of local and global networks, in that a local/regional orientation is associated with research companies in early stages of existence and with particular service companies, whereas a global orientation is associated with research companies that have passed the early stages. However, there seems to be a general trend that knowledge networks are increasingly shaped on a global scale.

Keywords:

• innovative companies
• knowledge networks
• capabilities
• ‘born globals'
• rough set analysis
• biotechnology
• the Netherlands.

Acknowledgements

This study has benefited from funding by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (project number 014-43-616-P) and by the Delft Center of Sustainable Urban Areas (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands). The author is grateful to three reviewers for their critical and constructive comments.