Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
1987, p. 32). As such, although the industrial district model is argued
to come from the transformation of an original competence-based
social network spatial typology (Paniccia 1998; Dei Ottati 2003),
such a model now provides examples of evolutionary transitions
from a trust-led social network to something which exhibits many of
the relational characteristics of the industrial complex model. The
only major difference here is the greatly reduced level of geographic
localization of many of the local input-output linkages, which are
increasingly transferred into global production networks (Garofoli
2003; Belussi and Sammarra 2010). On the other hand, there is some
recent empirical evidence which seems to indicate that there are
possibilities for mature industrial regions characterized by spatial
agglomerations of the trust-led social network type to undergo a
process of revitalization of technological capabilities towards new
and research-intensive productions (Heidenreich 2005; Belussi et al.
2008, Farshchi et al. 2009). Where this transformation takes place it
represents a shift away from a trust-led social network type of model
to something which is closer to a competence-based social network.
Fourth, there are some industrial cluster cases which are as yet rather
difficult to classify. These are the cases of the newly emerging and
rapidly changing industrial sectors such as biotechnology and mul-
timedia (e.g., Swann and Prevezer 1996; Baptista and Swann 1998;
Brouwer and den Hertog 2000;
Coenen et al. 2004; Fuchs and Koch
2005). Many of the innovations within these sectors actually take
place in large MNEs whose locational criteria primarily reflect those
of the industrial complex. Yet, in situations where activities in these
sectors are geographically concentrated amongst small and medium
firms, they appear to correspond most closely to the competence-
based social network type of system. The inter-industry spillovers
that emerge from the local integration of a variety of knowledge
sources, both internal (intra-firm and intra-cluster) and external (to
firms and cluster), and of input-output networks, may be in these
cases highly spurred by the presence of foreign firms. As such, the
local competence-creating processes depend on the embeddedness of
the MNE's local subsidiaries (Cantwell and Piscitello 2005; Tavares
and Teixeira, 2006; Rabbiosi 2008; Kramer et al. 2011).
●
5.6.2
MNEs, Related Variety and Regional Hierarchies of Technological
Excellence
Another illustrative example of co-evolution of technological profiles of
firms and space can be found in global-local interactions for the creation
