The role of a firm's absorptive capacity and the technology transfer process in clusters: How effective are technology centres in low-tech clusters?

摘要: This paper analyses how the internal resources of small- and medium-sized enterprises determine access (learning processes) to technology centres (TCs) or industrial research institutes (innovation infrastructure) in traditional low-tech clusters. These interactions basically represent traded (market-based) transactions, which constitute important sources knowledge The addresses role TCs clusters, uses semi-structured interviews with 80 firms a manufacturing cluster. results point out that producer–user are most frequent; thus, higher sector knowledge-intensive base, more likely utilization available infrastructure becomes. Conversely, sectors less structures, i.e. absorptive capacity (AC), present weak linkages TCs, as they frequently prefer interact suppliers, who act transceivers knowledge. Therefore, not all cluster can fully exploit the...