The study on cluster evolution patterns and firms’ networking strategies

Abstract

The industry cluster, one of the critical environmental factors for companies to grow, has experienced through the process of constant evolution over time. The latest developments of information and communication technologies and the enhancement of network tools have enabled the virtualization of the physical effects of cluster - spillover of knowledge, supporting resources, spaces, money, and surplus labor - which are included in the industry cluster. The cluster effect that was considered one of the exogenous strategy factors has been changed into an outsourcing and endogenous capacity factor through experiencing implementation or modularization by firms and agencies with utilizing information communi-cation and network technology. These capacities of implementation and modularization to make business ecological environment, so-called business platform or virtual cluster, can be the vital factor to determine the sustainability of innovative firms and agencies today. The de-velopments of web technologies (Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and etc.) have become carriers for operat-ing open innovation through learning and surplus of knowledge. Based on this background, this thesis has significance to clarify the process of evolution of industrial clusters and the driving factors to enable the virtual cluster, and to elicit networking strategies for firms’ growth in the cluster. The first essay shows the process of evolution in the software industrial cluster which is one of the representative examples of the knowledge industry by analyzing the correlation between the changes of firms’ networking structural changes and performances over time. The software industry forms geographic clusters with linkages and sharing of knowledge and it demonstrates a unique industrial cluster network structure caused from its network externality and exclusive nature. Analyzing network structure with the cross-section data of participants’ collaboration, information sharing, and networking activi...