Postface
An innovation system describes the relationships – scientific, technological, industrial, commercial, financial and political – between institutions, whether private or public: companies, research and engineering laboratories, administrations, etc. These relationships are most often composed of financial and information flows and the movements of people. The goal of such a system is to generate innovations (new organizations, new goods and processes, new resources: new combinations of productive resources). The system is based on innovation networks containing “business clusters”. A “business cluster” (or a network firm) can be defined as a set of legally and/or financially connected enterprises to a large company (pivot), which constitutes a system, an (or many) integrated production(s) into the same value chain that is under the direction of the pivot firm. The “cluster” is a network of businesses, the networks of which are formed by the interweaving of different “clusters”.
In her book, Blandine Laperche shows that the current organization of production is based on spatial deconcentration in terms of the implementation of production and the centralization of decision making, financial and informational investment and marketing. The relationship between the innovation system and “clusters” is the networking of scientific research and technological development, entered into jointly by enterprises and public institutions, with the goal of generating innovation.
Innovation ...