Small Worlds

Regional clusters, science parks, and other spatially bound constellations of co-located firms have been extensively researched over the last few decades. The merits of such location-based groups of companies are usually associated with inter-organizational synergies, knowledge transfer and technology exchange. What is less well understood in the current literature, however, is how companies can set-up and manage a corporate campus, in which interaction between a variety of firms will successfully lead to a chain of innovations over time. The central issue of our research on small worlds will be the challenges of setting up and managing an open co-located community of related firms, in terms of attracting the right mix of companies, fostering interaction and knowledge exchange and commercializing the ideas into marketable products and services.