| Abstract: | With the advent of the knowledge-based economy, the inter-industrial flow of technological knowledge is reckoned as the principal determinant of national competitiveness. The mode of knowledge flows, however, is intractably complex. Taking it as a network, this paper aims at providing an inductive taxonomy of industries based on the knowledge flow structure and thus identifying the user-supplier relationship among industries in terms of knowledge diffusion. Some proxy indexes are developed first to measure the knowledge flows, then the interactive mechanism among industries is investigated by the network analysis and eventually a taxonomy of industries is presented according to the characteristics of respective industries. The taxonomic approach highlights the importance of inter-industrial knowledge management system that facilitates knowledge flows across industries based on the idiosyncratic features of respective industries. |
