Fostering place-based innovation and internationalization – the new turn in German technology policy

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s German technology policy has experienced a paradigmatic shift from standard grant schemes towards a region-oriented and competition-based R&D policy. Currently, a new policy experiment, the InterClust contest, is under way, trying to simultaneously foster place-based innovation, R&D internationalization and the internationalization of innovative places. The current paper analyses the new policy, relating it to the recent literatures on heterogeneous firms and on cluster-life cycles, and presents results from a firm survey performed in 21 winner regions of InterClust. Findings show that the new funding scheme takes insights from recent theoretical developments into account and addresses important impediments to firm and cluster internationalization. Although it is too early for an overall assessment, it is argued that the long-term impact will critically depend on the inflow of heterogeneous knowledge and the strength of intra-regional mobilization effects. ARTICLE HISTORY

Unpacking the provision of the industrial commons in Industry 4.0 cluster

“…A large share of SMEs typical for Italy, but also many other EU regions-including the Central and East European transition economies, calls for smart adoption of smart manufacturing, which integrates and rewards territorial specialisation and local peculiarities. Thus, similar activities might be found in other countries, such as in Germany, where clusters are utilised as promising and effective instruments of place-based innovation and technology policy (Dohse, Fornahl, & Vehrke, 2018). Clusters seem to provide environment facilitating risk-sharing, e.g.…”

Primer on the Cluster Impact on Internationalisation in the Form of FDI in the Time of Industry 4.0

“…While the former from the perspective of cluster inhabitants and a cluster organisation might be labelled as active, outward-oriented internationalisation, the latter can be described as passive, inward-oriented internationalisation (Jankowska and Götz, 2018). The impact of clusters on internationalisation seems to happen via multiple channels (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991;Steiner, 1998;Smith, 2008;Sölvell, 2008;Fornahl and Menzel, 2010;Andersson, 2013;Dohse et al ., 2018). Clusters can serve as versatile tools which facilitata both the foreign expansion of domestic firms and the hosting of foreign investors Howells and Hedemann, 2009;Pla-Barber and Alegre, 2007;Zen et al ., 2011;Richardson et al ., 2012;Dhandapani, et al ., 2015;Colovic, Lamotte, 2014).…”

“…Thanks to the offered scale economies, externalities and other gains, a cluster may not only stimulate the internationalisation and expansion of domestic firms into new markets but also attract foreign investors. This is a result of the shaping of ownership (firm specific) and localisation (location specific) advantages (Dunning, 1980). By compiling these conceptual deliberations, this paper may contribute to the current discussion as it touches upon the so far neglected problem of the differentiation of clusters' impact on both outflowing foreign direct investment (OFDI) and incoming foreign direct investment (IFDI) in the era of digital transformation.…”

Introduction: regional clusters and internationalization - complementary or contrasting fields of research?

“…2 According to Marshall (1920), there are four localization externalities: access to specialized labour, access to specialized inputs, access to knowledge spillovers, and access to greater demand by reducing the consumer search costs. Although there has been earlier scientific work (e.g., Bathelt et al, 2004) highlighting the complementary meaning of 'global pipelines' (interregional or even international linkages), policy-makers, driven by the assumption that these externalities work only over short geographical distances, still primarily focus on stimulating cooperation and interaction among different organizations on the local or regional level, thereby limiting their measures to the 'local buzz' (Dohse et al, 2018;Grashof, 2020b).…”

“…However, disproportionate regionalization developments might narrow the cognitive distance and increase the level of similarity between organizations. As a result, path dependencies and situations of technological lock-ins may arise and hamper the innovativeness of regions (Fornahl et al, 2011;Dohse et al, 2018). Or as Giuliani and Bell put it: 'the mere reliance on localized knowledge can result in the "entropic death" of the cluster that remains locked-in to hand to build a sufficient level of a heterogeneous knowledge base, allowing for the influx and understanding as well as processing of hitherto unrelated knowledge into clusters (e.g., Giuliani, 2005).…”