Technological Innovation in the Context of Regional Clusters

Abstract

In the past decades there has been as much or even more literature on production system studies than the literature on companies as particular units, especially analyses of regional industrial clusters and their incidence on augmented innovation capabilities for the companies involved. This article offers new elements for analyzing the relation between clusters and innovation. It goes beyond the point of view of the impact of industrial clusters on increased innovation capabilities in the companies by proposing that socioeconomic and business innovations are a product of the interrelations of the stakeholders that comprise the cluster. That stance enables a typology of innovation for the production system and for individual companies alike. This article evidences that, by using graphic models built to analyze the clusters in the provincial department of Caldas, Colombia, both such types of innovation may be identified. The article concludes that clusters are environments that are propitious for both socioeconomic and business innovations