Capital Social e Innovación en clusters industriales

Abstract

The existing relationships among industry clusters, information and innovation have already been studied in other researches (Ahuja, 2000; Bell, 2005). However, no evidence has been found regarding how organizations manage the process for enhancing its position and getting better innovation output. We consider that the level of firm¿s social capital, for firms located inside an industry cluster, can provide informational advantages which could improve the innovation output. Moreover, we consider social capital as a multidimensional construct. In this research we examine different types of inter-organizational ties; mainly flows of tacit information, in a shoe-maker cluster. The results show that the firms with higher levels of social capital are more innovative both in products and processes