Managing where you are: agglomeration economies, managerial industry experience and innovation in South-East Asia
研究了集聚经济中多样性与专业化对企业创新的影响，发现管理者的行业经验能调节这种关系，尤其在东南亚农村地区，有经验的管理者能更好地利用地理环境促进创新。
It is well-established that firms leverage both internal and external resources for their innovation activities. Even though the role of agglomeration economies in shaping the external resources available to firms has been particularly well-studied it is still unclear whether it is diversity or specialisation within agglomerations that drives firm innovativeness. We suggest that both do but that their relations with firm innovativeness are moderated by managerial industry experience. Using data from four South-East Asian economies we find that managers with more industry experience are better able to make the most of where they are, leveraging the opportunities afforded by their geographic environment. This finding is most pronounced in rural areas where firms with inexperienced managers almost never innovate, whereas half of the firms with experienced managers do. This suggests that future agglomeration research should be attentive to firm-level idiosyncrasies.