A tale of two clusters: knowledge and emergence

Cluster emergence is an important topic but weakly conceptualized in the literature. Focusing on the interaction of the local knowledge pool and firm growth, the paper develops a comprehensive framework to understand cluster emergence. In the framework, the cluster formation process starts with the collision of local and external knowledge which generates an innovation and stimulates the creation of local pioneering firms in a new field. To support the growth of follow-up entrants in the new industry, the local knowledge pool needs to be expanded and deepened through local knowledge sharing and external knowledge inflows. The enlarged local knowledge pool enables local firms to grow and explore other fields further. To promote cluster emergence, public policies need to facilitate the interaction of the local knowledge pool and firm growth. The paper illustrates the interactive framework with two aluminum extrusion clusters in China that emerged in different ways over different time periods.     

Export Performance: Is It Possible through Knowledge and Capabilities? Evidence from Turkish Manufacturing Firms

Purpose: This article measures to what extent export performance is affected by certain resource-based view (RBV) elements and seeks to elucidate relationships between these elements. Design: Among those RBV elements, knowledge and experience as resources, and marketing, production, product development, logistics, and service differentiation as capabilities, are chosen to be the basis of this research. Their effects on export performance are measured with a survey applied to personnel of Turkish manufacturing firms operating in Istanbul district. Findings: The results show us that marketing planning capabilities and service differentiation capabilities have a significant effect on export performance. The overwhelming effect of knowledge and experience of firms on marketing planning capabilities is one of the intriguing findings. Notwithstanding that, we found no trace of a relationship between product development capabilities and service differentiation capabilities. Value: This research provides several managerial and academic implications by contributing to a resource-based view in terms of knowledge and capabilities. Additionally, in this study, it is underlined that collective knowledge is vital for achieving high export performance.     

产业集群知识创新的重要观点

知识创新在促进经济发展中发挥着越来越重要的作用，产业集群是经济发展的重要载体，本文梳理了近年来国外学者关于产业集群知识创新研究的重要领域和观点，以期为促进国内经济发展提供研究支撑。本文首先从产业集群重点关注的外部性之一知识溢出入手，围绕本地嗡鸣和全球通道观点介绍国外学者的相关分析和思考；然后进一步将知识本身打开，列举不同的知识类型；接下来围绕知识的传递特性，介绍知识的网络结构；最后对知识的动态演变、创新过程、临近维度等其他重点领域相关内容和观点进行梳理。     

Convergence between satellite information and farmers’ perception of drought in rangelands of North-West Patagonia,Argentina

Drought is a complex natural hazard with social and environmental implications. Satellite information is increasingly used to support decision-makers in preventing or coping with the negative impacts of drought. The integration of local and scientific knowledge to support drought monitoring is still far from being the main procedure in the development of drought monitoring and early warning systems. This study aimed at assessing the degree of convergence between satellite information on the effect of droughts on rangeland vegetation, from time series analysis, and farmers’ perception of drought in North-West Patagonia, Argentina. We characterised the scientific evidence of drought in terms of duration, spatial distribution, most severe years and recovery for the period 2000–2018 by identifying inter-annual NDVI changes. Farmers’ perceptions and experiences of drought were studied with open-ending interviews, with respect to occurrence, duration and recovery for that period. Satellite information matched farmers’ perception of drought at a regional scale, emphasising the value of remote sensing tools in supporting regional policy decision-making. However, farmers’ perceptions and recall of past drought impacts were more diverse than satellite information at a local level, highlighting the need for knowledge integration at finer scales.     

Identity Building Through Mediation by African Tailors

In contemporary African cities, dressing well and wearing exclusive garments has become crucial for people in search of identity, distinction and individuality. The research presented in this article, situated at disciplinary intersections of cultural studies, fashion practices and sustainability, provides a case study of African tailors conducted in Maputo and Lisbon, with a special focus on identity building of African immigrants in Portugal. However, the role of tailors in this acculturation process has been ignored in the consumption approach to creative cities. This study is therefore also a reaction to the mainly Western world of regular couture, and to ‘creative city materials’ that focus on consumption. Instead, we emphasize the importance of African tailors who de facto shape urban experiences—visually incrementing practices—that are fundamental to the comprehension of sartorial culture, while we also allude to the complex intersections between local and global markets. In the first part of this article we describe a semi-ethnographic study among tailors in Maputo and Lisbon. The second part presents a participatory action approach that entailed developing an educational programme for African tailors where culture and creativity meet. This programme empowered tailors to tap into their cultural knowledge on tailoring and their awareness of community identity. In our study we argue that the idea of creative cities and their creative economy should be approached from a cultural perspective, by building awareness of the importance of local creative classes instead of focusing on importing those classes.     

Knowledge sharing,knowledge leaking and relative innovation performance: An empirical study

External knowledge sharing and knowledge leakage often pose a strategic dilemma when firms conduct innovation activities. In this study, we focus on the positive and negative effects of this phenomenon. In particular, we empirically examine the effects of a firm׳s external knowledge sharing on its relative innovation performance under the contingencies of accidental and intentional leakage of business-critical knowledge. Results based on a survey of 150 Finnish technology-intensive firms show that external knowledge sharing has a positive effect on innovation performance, but high levels of accidental and intentional knowledge leakage by a firm׳s employees negatively moderate this relationship. These results contribute to the understanding of the potentially positive and negative issues related to external knowledge sharing and knowledge leakage, which have thus far remained empirically under-researched.     

Employee mobility,spin‐outs,and knowledge spill‐in: How incumbent firms can learn from new ventures

Research summary: We consider conditions in which incumbent firms are particularly poised to benefit from knowledge spilling in from new ventures that employ individuals previously employed by the focal incumbent firm. We distinguish between inventors who leave their incumbent employers to found spin‐outs and those who become non‐founding employees of existing new ventures. Using a sample of new ventures and incumbent firms in the U.S. information technology (IT) sector, we find that incumbents are more likely to benefit from patented knowledge that spills in from their spin‐outs than from new ventures that employ non‐founding inventors formerly employed by the respective incumbent. Any advantage that parent firms have in reaping such knowledge quickly dissipates, however, when these parents have a history of misappropriating the intellectual property of others. Managerial summary: It has long been acknowledged that new ventures can acquire valuable knowledge from their larger and more established counterparts by hiring away their talented employees. We consider the possibility of a reverse flow of knowledge where established firms learn from those new ventures that have poached employees from them. We find that established information technology (IT) firms are more likely to learn and build on the technology of their spin‐outs (i.e., new ventures founded by their former inventors) than from new ventures that simply employ non‐founding inventors formerly employed by the respective IT firm. Any advantage that these IT firms had in reaping technical know‐how from their spin‐outs quickly dissipated, however, when they had a history of misappropriating the intellectual property of others. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards Assessing the Knowledge Gap in Medical Tourism

The medical tourism industry is a fast growing global niche market that generated $20 billion in income for destinations around the world. This study suggests and tests a mechanism to assess the medical tourism providers’ perceptions about the tourists’ perceived important product attributes when selecting a medical tourism destination. The results indicate that the various medical tourism providers groups do not vary in their perceptions regarding 24 important attributes of the medical tourism product and that they all agree that tourists perceive the medical variables to be more important than the tourism related variables. Using the Korean market for data collection, the study’s additional contribution is providing insights for Korean government agencies, operators of medical tourism hospitals, policymakers, and marketers.     

Knowledge Management in Supply Chains: The Role of Explicit and Tacit Knowledge

We theorize, building on the knowledge‐based view and the theoretical distinction between explicit and tacit knowledge, that knowledge management capability across the supply chain manifests itself in explicit and tacit knowledge, which in turn effectuates supply chain performance. The model is tested with survey data from 195 small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises reporting on their primary supply chain. The results indicate that the supply chain's knowledge management capability manifests itself in both explicit and tacit knowledge, with the latter being influenced more strongly. Moreover, it was found that while both explicit and tacit knowledge influence supply chain performance, the latter exerts a significantly greater impact than the former. Exploratory post hoc analyses add robustness to these findings and investigate mechanisms inherent to the transformation of tacit into explicit knowledge. Overall, this research contributes to academic theory development in logistics and supply chain management by the dichotomization of knowledge types and the demonstration of their differential magnitude of effects, and to managerial practice by providing important guidance for logistics managers structuring their knowledge management efforts across supply chains.     

Design and development of inventory knowledge discovery system

Inventory management (IM) performance is affected by the forecasting accuracy of both demand and supply. In this paper, an inventory knowledge discovery system (IKDS) is designed and developed to forecast and acquire knowledge among variables for demand forecasting. In IKDS, the TREes PArroting Networks (TREPAN) algorithm is used to extract knowledge from trained networks in the form of decision trees which can be used to understand previously unknown relationships between the input variables so as to improve the forecasting performance for IM. The experimental results show that the forecasting accuracy using TREPAN is superior to traditional methods like moving average and autoregressive integrated moving average. In addition, the knowledge extracted from IKDS is represented in a comprehensible way and can be used to facilitate human decision-making.