Collective Learning in Knowledge Economies - Milieu or Market?

This project is the Austrian part of an European Science Foundation, European Collaborative Research Project, involving comparative analysis in Austria, UK, Germany and Norway of the locational preferences, emergence and growth of firms in knowledge-based industries which according to OECD include high technology manufacturing and knowledge-based services. The focus of this collaborative project are Information and Communication Technology industries (ICT) and biotechnology firms which are of particular interest for their innovation interfacing capacity across sectors and their economic dynamism. Both industries are geographically concentrated in and within major economies such as the US, Germany and the UK. In Austria, these industries are not strongly developed so far, but we find concentrations in the Vienna region, and at a smaller scale also in Styria, Upper Austria and other locations. It is presently unclear to what extent any of these concentrations of knowledge-based industry constitute clusters, which would be characteriseed by science-industry links, interfirm networking and collective learning. The aim of the proposed research is to identify the industrial location and organizational characteristics of knowledge-based clusters, differentiate these from other forms of industry concentration, and ascertain the extent to which clustering is beneficial to firm performance. The following questions will be investigated: How does firm performance differ between sectors and locational settings in terms of growth indicators and productivity, innovation and new firm formation? To which extent can we observe economic spillovers as literature predicts in cluster settings? To which extent is there collective learning and tacit knowledge exchange among knowledge based firms and science in a variety of locational settings? What is the importance of `milieu` effects for knowledge based firms, particularly those involving institutional innovation support? These questions will be investigated by theoretical analysis and exploration of key concepts, and by using quantitative and qualitative research methods including the analysis of secondary data sources, firm surveys and interviews in selected regions as well as interviews and workshops with policy actors.