Investigation of the ways in which knowledge dynamics are territorially shaped is challenging.
Addressing the connection of space as a scope of action and space as being generated as a part of the social process, it takes us back into the central debate in social science concerning the relationship between structure and agency. On a macro level, knowledge dynamics are underpinned by the institutional characteristics of a territory which have formed over time.
Substantial theoretical and empirical research underlines the importance of place specific institutional regimes for knowledge exchange and innovation development. However, to what extent different types of innovation rely on distinct kinds of institutional arrangements is still unclear. A major reason is that the embeddedness in specific institutional set-ups has by no
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means a deterministic impact. Instead, it provides both exogenous constraints and resources for firms and organizations involved in knowledge production.
In the paper we suggest to take on a dynamic perspective and investigate knowledge interaction processes which underlie innovation events. Dynamics of knowledge unfold at the micro level of actors, therefore a key issue is how firms and other organizations, embedded in place-specific institutional endowments, use such localized resources in knowledge interactions. This question is particularly interesting in the light of the dynamic restructuring of global value chains and the increasing internationalisation of knowledge-intensive activities.
Both developments, enabled by new technologies, contribute to the growing complexity of vertical and horizontal knowledge domains. In innovation processes firms are facing an increasing need to combine heterogeneous knowledge sources spread over organizational, technological and spatial boundaries. While the consequences of these developments were discussed controversially as mirrored in the global-local debate (Cooke 2005, Bathelt et al.
2004), the far more complex modes of labour division related to innovation, were rarely taken into account in detail. Insights into the implications of coordination and governance of the complex division of labour in knowledge production are scarce. Deeper empirical investigation in the connected organizational and institutional change linked with knowledge dynamics is still missing, but is indeed necessary to better understand the spatio-temporality of knowledge dynamics behind innovation.
The empirical findings provide substantial evidence for the mulit-scalar nature of knowledge interaction processes. Characterisitic for their territorial shaping is a mixed pattern of interactions at close and great distances. During the analyzed knowledge production processes, actors on a local, regional, national and international scale were included in the interorganizational relations. The decisive factors for the selection of cooperation partners were their specialized cumulative knowledge and the trust in their useful potential to the innovation, regardless of the geographical scale.
During the life-span of an innovation we can observe different emphases in the intensity of the location of interactions. The biographical approach has proven to be useful to gain insights into the variable composition of interaction partners during whole innovative event. Even though the knowledge value chains of the automotive industry in Baden-Württemberg have become highly complex, diversified and spatially enhanced due to reorganization processes, the vertical knowledge domain seems to form a focal point to explore local as well as distant knowledge.
For example the long lasting cooperation between the University Stuttgart and the US firm Cray computing contributed to build up localized competences in high performance computing over many years. This cumulative knowledge base is used and explored in new inter-organizational relations in the large scale cooperation project ASCS.
Additionally, it became obvious that innovative events are often closely linked to organizational change, respectively the emergence of new institutions. Micro dynamics of knowledge in inter-organizational relations themselves reshape the territorial configuration of economies in creating new forms of organization as part of the innovation process. This can be the
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emergence of new organizational bodies like in the case of the ASCS. A common organizational framework can probably be regarded as a prerequisite for trust-building and knowledge sharing, in cases where actors fear the risk of knowledge loss or usually encounter each other as competitors and not as partners. Another reason for the creation of new organizational entities is the issue of representation. In this case an organizational representation of the new purpose was necessary to acquire further financial funds from the public sector to realize the new knowledge production. In the case of the visual simulation cluster also the emergence of new network structures could be observed. So it needs to be noted, that the global-local dichotomy (cf. Bathelt et al. 2004) misses the complexity of knowledge interactions over time in innovative change.
The comparison of the empirical cases supports exisiting findings which point out that synthetic and symbolic knowledge production differs in distinct ways (cf. Asheim 2007). The organizational processes of knowledge production among the Media KIBS and the Engineering KIBS are different even both KIBS firms operate in the same vertical knowledge domain of the automotive industry. For the coming through of a successful innovation based on combinatorial knowledge dynamics, organizational proximity, the flexible deployment of temporal geographical proximity and the development of appropriate organizational routines in inter- and often intra-organizational relations seem to be crucial.
As the Media KIBS show only by combining the logic of the organizational routines used in the industrial sector of the automotive industry with its own existing internal processes, the firm achieved the necessary scaling of the symbolic knowledge output. Following the spatial and temporal set up of the innovation events, due to the biographical method, we could observe the dynamic use of temporal and geographical proximity in the change process in very distinct ways. In the synthetic knowledge field of the automotive industry the separation of knowledge exploration and exploitation (production and R&D) in place and time has already practiced for long time. Organizational routines to govern knowledge creation, like the product development process or product design process are well established. They facilitate coordination and interaction processes and reduce uncertainties in knowledge production. As the interaction processes with the German and Austrian suppliers show, knowledge can also be sourced over larger distances. The established routines in the vertical knowledge domain support mutual understanding within the process of knowledge production. The physical proximity which is produced on a regular basis and institutionalized by the actors in advance to structure the uncertain process in time seems sufficient.
As long as only one knowledge base is involved in knowledge creation, the specification of knowledge modules and the definition of interfaces appear to be much clearer and easier for the actors involved. But as soon as different knowledge bases need to be integrated, the necessity for multiple forms of proximity being simultaneously in use among the actors gets stronger. The interaction processes of the OEM and the Engineering KIBS show that physical proximity in the form of punctual meetings in time seem not enough, to integrate and combine synthetic and symbolic knowledge. Although the actors shared the same vertical knowledge domain, working on site over a longer time period was necessary.
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Summarizing our findings about the territorial shaping of combinatorial knowledge dynamics, the place-specific institutional endowment and cumulative knowledge bases provide a rich repertoire for variation that can be used by actors to achieve innovative solutions. But the results mirrored obstacles in the production of combinatorial knowledge which still need more in-depth research.
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