Innovations, Regions and Projects: Studies in New Forms of Knowledge Governance

Innovations, Regions and Projects: Studies in new forms of knowledge governance Edited by Bjørn Terje Asheim and Åge Mariussen Nordregio 2003 First published in 2003 by Nordregio. PO Box 1658, SE-111 86 Stockholm, Sweden Tel. +46 8 463 54 00, fax: +46 8 463 54 01 e-mail: [email protected] website: www.nordregio.se Innovations, Regions and Projects: Studies in new forms of knowledge governance. Edited by Bjørn Terje Asheim and Åge Mariussen. Stockholm: Nordregio 2003 (Nordregio Report 2003:3) ISSN 1403-2503 ISBN 91-89332-33-4 Nordic co-operation takes place among the countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, as well as the autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland. The Nordic Council is a forum for co-operation between the Nordic parliaments and governments. The Council consists of 87 parliamentarians from the Nordic countries. The Nordic Council takes policy initiatives and monitors Nordic co-operation. Founded in 1952. The Nordic Council of Ministers is a forum for co-operation between the Nordic governments. The Nordic Council of Ministers implements Nordic co-operation. The prime ministers have the overall responsibility. Its activities are co-ordinated by the Nordic ministers for co-operation, the Nordic Committee for co-operation and portfolio ministers. Founded in 1971. Stockholm, Sweden 2003 Preface This report summarizes main findings and results from two projects: • New Forms of Knowledge Governance, which has been funded by the Norwegian Research Council, with the TIK Centre at the University of Oslo as main contractor, and Nordregio, Stock- holm, as sub-contractor. Bjørn Terje Asheim was responsible for this project. • Regionalized Innovation Policy, which has been funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers and Nordregio. Åge Mariussen has been responsible for this project, which is also reported in other ways. The list of contributors of the report reflects the network of Euro- pean researchers, which has cooperated through several years, in an effort to develop theories of regional innovation systems and clusters further. Stockholm, October 2003 3 Contents Introduction – Why study temporary organizations? Bjørn T. Asheim and Åge Mariussen......................................................... 7 1. Innovation systems, institutions and space – Åge Mariussen and Björn T. Asheim....................................................................................... 13 2. Rational Drug Design, the Knowledge Value Chain and Bioscience Megacentres – Philip Cooke................................................. 41 3. Kista from ABC to Science – Åge Mariussen..................................... 67 4. Networking and project organization in the Styrian automotive industry – Franz Tödtling and Michaela Trippl................... 89 5. The Project Ecology of Advertising: Tasks, Talents and Teams – Gernot Grabher................................................................................ 115 6. Temporary Organisations and Spatial Embeddedness of Learning and Knowledge Creation – Bjørn T. Asheim......................................... 151 7. The Learning Firm in the Learning Region: Broad Participation as Social Capital Building – Bjørn T. Asheim....................................... 177 8. Regional clusters under international duress: Between local learning and global corporations – Bjørn T. Asheim and Sverre J. Herstad.............................................. 203 9. Regional innovation systems, varieties of capitalism and non-local relations: Challenges from the globalising economy – Bjørn T. Asheim and Sverre J. Herstad.............................................. 241 10. Regional innovation systems, new forms of knowledge governance and enduring innovative logics in the age of a ‘new economy’– Sverre J. Herstad....................................................... 275 11. The changing governance of IDs: The entry of multinationals in local nets –The case of Montebelluna – Fiorenza Belussi .............. 317 Presentation of the authors .................................................................... 348 5 Introduction: Why study temporary organizations? Bjørn Terje Asheim and Åge Mariussen This report analyzes new forms of knowledge governance in the global economy, using comparative studies of European industries and regions. We discuss how new organisational forms are affected by corporate governance, company culture and institutional constraints. The three core ideas of the report are: • Firms, industries, and clusters who know how to use temporary organisations, in particular projects, for new knowledge generation, and utlization are able to access, transform, and exploit knowledge for economic useful purposes better and faster than those who do not. • Successful utilization of temporary organizations (projects) depends on the knowledge base of firms, industries, and clusters, but also, more importantly, on institutional context (business system), spatial system, and development coalitions within which projects and project ecologies are embedded. • Temporary organizations (projects) are used in increasingly new ways across different industries and clusters, as they become more deeply integrated into the learning processes, transforming the way business systems and their innovation systems operates. Temporary organizations (projects)1 have weaknesses as well as strengths. • First, the legitimisation of a temporary form of organisation (a project) is based on a particular task that either might be complex and non-routine or rather standardised. The particular task of a temporary system, in Lundin & Söderholm’s concep- tion (1995, p. 440), is equivalent with a permanent organisation’s devotion to goals. While goals primarily provide foci for decision-making, a task focuses on action. • Secondly, interdependence characterises the definition as well as the accomplishment of the task. Particularly in cases where 1 This section is heavily in debt to Grabher and Hassink. 7 the task is complex and cannot be decomposed in detail autonomously ex ante ‘members must keep interrelating with one another in trying to arrive at viable solutions’ (Goodman & Goodman 1976, p. 495). • Thirdly, the temporary form of organisation is assembled by a contractor or project leader. Beyond the obvious role in man- aging projects, the contractor might be seen as the ‘link pin’ on which trust is focused. • The role of the contractor is also a most visible manifestation of the general phenomenon that temporary forms of organisation, fourthly, are embedded in and reflect the power relations between and within participating organisations (Lovell 1993, Zeller 2002). In particular large-scale projects might develop finely tuned and strict internal hierarchies. • Fifthly, meeting deadlines is a main criterion for evaluating the performance of temporary forms of organisation (see Wenger & Snyder 2000). Temporary forms of organization have an upside: projects make it possible to learn fast, through combining different forms of knowledge. The corresponding downside is also well known: Knowledge created in the project may easily be destroyed when the project is finalized. Suc- cessful use of projects for economic useful purposes crucially depends upon the project implementation process back into the permanent organization where it started. This phase may or may not succeed. At its best, project implementation may be seen as a fast and interactive process of learning, where new knowledge is created through the combination of different forms of knowledge. This process of interactive new knowledge creation is the ‘upstream’ side of the project value chain. Then, however, the deadline is crossed, the project is terminated. At this crucial point, two events may take place: Either, the output of the project is success- fully reintegrated into the practice of the firm(s), possibly enriching the knowledge base – or the reintegration may for some reason fail, and knowledge created through the project destroyed. The bottom line is that projects rely on their institutional context, and the firm knowledge base. Use of temporalized forms of organization is strongest in industries with an analytical (science-based) knowledge- base (e.g. ITC and biotech) and a symbolic knowledge base (e.g. the advertising industry and new media), but projects are also spreading to more traditional industry based on a synthetic (engineering-based) knowledge base (e.g. the automobile industry). The structure of the knowledge base is enabling certain forms of interactive learning, and 8 utilization of projects, thus determining how the inovation system works, but the innovation system may also dynamize, diversify, and transform the knowledge base, and thus open up for new paths. We have examined alternative forms of temporary organisations which, first, possess the flexibility of the project and ability to recombine different knowledges and create new knowledge while, secondly, reintegrating new knowledge through collective (localised) learning. This reduce problems of project organisation with regard to knowledge destruction. Development coalitions in learning companies and regions are examples of such alternative temporary organisations. The cases presented cover selected industries/sectors and regions in Europe. Case studies were carried out by a network of European researchers in Norway, Sweden, the UK, Germany and Italy. The case studies were selected on the basis of the knowledge base of the industry/sector. We

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