Innovating through Clusters

Chiara D'Alise,Luca Giustiniano,Enzo Peruffo

doi:10.5772/59028

Abstract

This paper focuses on innovation performance and investigates the impact of clusters, or localized networks involving industrial, academic and institutional players, in the pharmaceutical setting; we aim to enrich the line of inquiry into cluster-based innovation by applying a social network analysis (SNA) approach. The cluster concept has been defined in ambiguous ways, corresponding to a large variety of spatial and organizational concrete configurations. By analysing the U.S. pharmaceutical context, we show the structural and nodal network characteristics of the clusters and we shed some light on the “small-world” effects of the structural holes.

Highlights

With the growth of cooperative forms of management, positive perspectives on cooperation have, over the last decade, enjoyed a notable revival, especially when compared to the dominant strength of the competitive model as a paradigm of resource allocation efficiency [1]
While authors studying small world networks have usually focused on single organizations, suggesting that they can be broken into subgroups, semiautonomous subunits5, we focus instead on inter-cluster dynamics, where the subgroups are the single clusters and the organization can be all the clusters considered together
We explored the arguments mentioned in the previous sections by using a social network approach and a regression model applied to the U.S pharmaceutical industry

Summary

Introduction

With the growth of cooperative forms of management, positive perspectives on cooperation have, over the last decade, enjoyed a notable revival, especially when compared to the dominant strength of the competitive model as a paradigm of resource allocation efficiency [1]. Since the late 1980s, the rate of interorganizational alliances, or voluntary agreements between firms involving the exchange, sharing, or codevelopment of products, technologies, or services, has accelerated in multiple industries [4] This situation is true in an R&D intensive sector such as the pharmaceutical industry, where innovation is perhaps the most relevant performance driver. The pharmaceutical industry is characterized by the growing phenomenon of alliances and mergers and acquisitions (M&A)—both of which are strategic paths to increased reliance on external sources in a vertical deintegration process—due to some remarkable tendencies. These are mainly connected to R&D activities and reflected in increased regulatory constraints and technological complexity

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