Competitiveness in Regional Clusters. The Case of Océ's ‘Knowledge Industry Clustering’ Project

This work is a contribution to the growing body of literature on learning, innovation, networks, knowledge and space. The main argument of this literature is that today’s economy can best be characterised as a knowledgebased economy. The argument goes that knowledge and learning are the key to innovation and competitiveness. Furthermore, firms depend on collaboration in networks to access knowledge beyond their control. These networks are argued to have an important spatial dimension. An oft-heard criticism of this body of literature is that it may present some very interesting theoretical views, but that the empirical support for these views is generally poor. This work answers that criticism by presenting a case study of inter-firm collaboration on innovation in a regional manufacturing network. However, due to its focus on the empirical side, the theoretical part of this study is not very elaborate. Instead, this work assumes that most readers will be familiar with what can be referred to as the mainstream literature (see below) and only touches on this literature briefly. In view of the theme of this chapter, the above approach seems justifiable. Moreover, Jan Lambooy himself has published extensively in this particular field, i.e., Lambooy (2000), Lambooy and Boekema (1998), and Lambooy et al. (2002). This work focuses on the presentation of a case study in order to let the empirical information speak for itself. The empirical information will then be interpreted in the light of the mainstream literature in order both to support and criticise this literature.