Knowledge integrators and the survival of manufacturing clusters
研究了意大利东北部两个制造业集群中，主导企业通过整合全球市场与本地技术知识来保持生产粘性，从而支撑集群竞争力的策略。
Over the past two decades, the greater prevalence of global supply chains has had contrasting effects on Western manufacturing clusters. While some of them dwindled, others proved resilient. Contributing to the recent literature on co-located clusters and clusters' linkages, we focus on the impact of lead firms’ strategies on the competitiveness of a pair of ‘twin’ clusters located in Northeast Italy. Our findings suggest that production remains ‘sticky’ when leading firms pursue ‘process-embedded’ innovation by integrating global market and local technical knowledge. We refer to this type of firm as a Knowledge Integrator and discuss how its strategy supports the competiveness of localized suppliers.