Does collective learning in clusters contribute to innovation?

摘要

This paper explores the phenomenon of collective learning in the context of clusters, and investigates how collective learning contributes to the innovation performance of cluster firms. Collective learning is an interactive process of accumulating knowledge from different local resources. The process is made possible through several channels. Analysing data collected from 290 cluster firms, we identified three collective learning channels: interaction with local firms, interaction with local institutions, and interaction with the local labour market. Additionally, we tested how these channels contribute to innovation performance of cluster firms. The results reveal that local labour is positively related to innovation performance, while indicating that interaction with local firms is negatively related to innovation performance. The conclusions discuss the policy implications of these findings.