摘要
高科技产业集群内蕴含着丰富的创业机会,而集群网络的结构特征是否对集群层面的企业家精神发挥水平具有影响?为回答这个问题,本文利用1998—2005年美国信息技术、通信设备制造和生物医药三大高科技产业集群的数据,对高科技产业集群的网络结构特征与集群企业家精神发展水平的相关性进行了实证研究。研究结果表明,集群网络的集聚系数对新企业创立具有正向影响;集群网络的平均路径距离与企业家创业呈负相关关系。
Entrepreneurship is widely viewed as an important engine of regional economic growth. Entrepreneurship contributes to new job creation and productivity improvement in different regions. New ventures adopt novel technology in order to stimulate regional economic development. Today＇s economic map demonstrates that industries tend to cluster geographically. Clustering has become one of key drivers for regional economic growth, and its impact on business competitiveness and regional prosperity has been well documented. Academic scholars and policy makers are particularly interested in understanding how entrepreneurship can be fostered at the cluster level. Our approach is to use a range of social network methods instead of firm-level approaches to analyze differences and similarities in entrepreneurship at cluster-wide networks in terms of their structure and properties. To better understand the structural property of hi- tech clusters, we map the network of innovators using patent authorship data. We construct a network of assignees as cluster network. Since data about assignees is time-sensitive, attention needs to be paid to the process of updating assignee list. Our approach is to update the assignee data in each sub-dataset, which corresponds to a 5-year window period. To test our hypothesis, we construct a balanced panel of U. S. hi-tech clusters, including IT, BIO and Communication Equipment Manufacturing industries for the period 1998--2005. We use Pajek for network statistics and visualization. This allows us to collect network structure properties. The empirical analysis also uses new establishments as a proxy of entrepreneurship at cluster level form the US Cluster Mapping Project. Consistent with our prediction, the results indicate that the cluster coefficient has positive impact on new establishments because dense local clustering enhances entrepreneur access to more entrepreneurial resources in the network by fostering communication and cooperation. Clusters, which exhibit short average path lengths, will have more new establishments than networks that do not exhibit the characteristics because the short distance between nodes provides entrepreneur more entrepreneurial opportunities through knowledge spillovers. Furthermore, cluster network size has positive impact on entrepreneurship. This finding is consistent with the view that innovation capacity plays an important role in entrepreneurship at cluster level. The final section provides a summary of analysis results, research limitations and future research directions. In this paper, we contribute to theentrepreneurship literature by empirically testing the hypothesis that the structural properties of the cluster network positively affect entrepreneurship at cluster level in USA. These findings reinforce the claim that agglomerations and clustering play an important role in entrepreneurship.
出处
《管理工程学报》
CSSCI
北大核心
2013年第2期32-37,共6页
Journal of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management
基金
教育部人文社科青年基金资助项目(10YJC630344)
江苏省社科研究基地重点资助项目(10JD009)
江苏省教育厅高校哲学社会科学研究重大资助项目(2010ZDAXM001)
关键词
产业集群
社会网络分析
知识溢出
企业家精神
industrial cluster
social network analysis
knowledge spillovers
entrepreneurship
