ISSN : 2287-1608
It is generally understood that clusters are the promoters of innovation and therefore, the attention of researchers has been increasingly to discern the factors driving innovation among the firms in a cluster, especially in a high-tech cluster. In this study, we identify the variables capturing the nature of a firm that possibly impact the absorptive capacity of a firm and subsequently ascertain their impact on the degree of interactions between a firm, and other firms and associated institutions within and outside a cluster, respectively. Furthermore, we probe the influence of these interactions as a whole on firm-level innovation. The study was carried out in the context of Bengaluru, which houses the densely interconnected network of innovation-intensive high-tech manufacturing firms forming a high-tech manufacturing cluster. Data were drawn from 101 high-tech manufacturing firms belonging to electronics, machine tools, electrical and pharmaceutical industries. Based on the cluster analysis and subsequent graphical analysis on each of the three profiled clusters, it was found that size and origin of a firm have significant impact on the degree of firm's interactions. In turn, higher dynamism of firms in terms of degree of interactions led to higher innovation performance.
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