Authors: chiara cantu; daniela corsaro
The Italian industrial districts are characterised by a fully concentrated structure (Cedrola 2005), where all the predominant activities are kept in a sole area, allowing firms to operate under special conditions and creating a sort of shield. In a traditional point of view, intra-district relationships allow firms to develop resource sharing. All firms need resources in order to operate and develop a supply system (Ford et al., 2003) but not a single company has all the knowledge, competencies, expertise and resources to bring about innovations. This fact accelerates firms accessing external sources process (Lam 1997). The technological district is based on a “scientific production chain” which is different from the traditional production chain of the traditional district, and it is considered as the regional aggregation of high technological activities, including research activities and industrial production. In this context relationships allow knowledge and technology transfer.This working paper aims to understand if the belonging to a geographical organization (the district) could affect a technology transfer among actors and how this process occurs. We will consider the points of view of different actors in the network (district’s technological foundation, firms and research institutes), since we suppose that the different actors interpretations could affect the effectiveness of technology transfer in relationships. As empirical evidence, we will analyse Torino Wireless, recognised as the first Italian technological district centre of excellence. The research is still in progress and, at the moment, we are deepening on the role of Technological Foundation.
Journal: n.a. (n.a. – n.a.)
Web Address: n.a.
Publish Year: 2008
Conference: Uppsala, Sweden (2008)