North Carolina's Locus of Innovation: Creating Networks of Social Capital in the RTP Community of Small Manufacturers

Abstract

As a small manufacturing entrepreneur trying to develop and sell a radical innovation in vacuum cleaners, James Dyson had to overcome major technical, strategic, financial and legal hurdles to compete with the global corporations (MNCs). Competing with the global corporations meant that Dyson had to come up with resources that were not readily available to the MNCs.This article begins by using the example of James Dyson's success to explain why social business networks are essential to the new field of innovation economics.We review A New Social Network Built on the Ashes of the Old Social Network, where Gabbay & Leenders (1999) identify the most important resource that small manufacturers have in competing with the large corporations, which they called corporate social capital.We explain that business social networks are like Sasquatch and Big Foot. Every one talks about them, but no one has actually seen one.We conclude that the pathway of future economic growth in North Carolina depends on the creation of new business social networks that promote innovation economics.