The role of the firm's internal and relational capabilities in clusters: when distance and embeddedness are not enough to explain innovation
基于欧洲瓷砖集群中48家中小企业的数据，研究发现企业内部资源对获取外部知识至关重要，且内部与关系资源的组合能协同促进创新，仅靠距离或嵌入性无法解释集群创新。
Recent studies about clusters claim that firm-specific characteristics should be considered as central to the explanation of innovation This article contributes to this literature and explores the role of combinations of internal and relational resources to the explanation of innovation in clusters The results from 48 small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) located in one of the leading European ceramic tile clusters stress that a firm's strategy—understood as a combination of both internal and relational resources—is important, influences innovation and partially shapes the dynamics of clusters. The results highlight the role of a firm's internal resources as crucially important in the access to external knowledge, i.e. to absorption capacity. As such, the external resources in clusters are exploited and combined in different ways according to a firm's internal resources. In addition, evidence is presented of a synergistic effect from the interaction between a firm's internal and relational resources. These results support the idea that absorptive capacity is crucial to the effective exploitation of external know-how and to obtaining benefit from complementarities between internal and external resources. Neither distance nor embeddedness is sufficient to explain innovation in environments in which firms maintain frequent and multiple relationships.