Enterprises' Knowledge Creation within a Brazilian's Industrial Cluster

Abstract

This research deals with knowledge creation at the level of enterprises located within a cluster. This paper is based on a case study, which is the industrial cluster dedicated to elastomers technologies, located in the Sinos Valley, Rio Grande do Sul. The data were collected from interviews with the strategically level of the cluster coordination, completed with secondary data. The results show that the research centre centralizes the technical knowledge on companies’ products development and the companies send their technicians to exchange knowledge with this research centre. The knowledge developed in this center is replicated into companies when they develop new products. The managerial knowledge is centralized on the syndicate which helps enterprises to improve their competitiveness and managerial skills. Individual actors meet together in communities of practices to exchange information and perspectives on strategy, policy and technological matters. We suggest that the cluster should encourage and support an additional level of interactions to maintain knowledge creation and interest of the cluster: this level is concerned with inter-enterprises interactions (i.e., alliances). We also point the critical role of the cluster governance for supporting three main dimensions of knowledge: technology based managerial based and commercial based knowledge. This research considers the process of knowledge creation that occurs within the cluster’s actors, through four dimensions (actors, economic and strategy, social and political, management) that makes the process occurring on two levels (intra-company and the cluster) dynamic.