A multi-level exploration of learning and knowing for innovation in an emerging biotechnology industry

Abstract

Innovation in disciplines, sectors, nations, regions and clusters has received considerable attention from innovation scholars. Yet, despite scholars’ efforts to examine innovation at these macro levels of the innovation system, there remains a gap in explaining innovation at the more micro-levels. This thesis explores influences on firms’ and individuals’ practices of accessing expertise for innovation. Findings of my research contribute towards new understandings about innovation at the more micro-levels of firms and individuals. Drawing together gaps in the existing organisational learning, organisational knowledge, and innovation literatures, and the research problem faced by biotechnology firms in an emerging industrial cluster in Auckland, New Zealand, two research questions are posed: 1. What obstacles do biotechnology firms in emerging industrial clusters face to accessing expertise for innovation? 2. How are individuals’ search and selection practices for firms’ innovation influenced by geographic and relational location? The research model is developed and operationalised in four intellectually related research studies that are reported as independent research papers. The first research question is addressed by two studies. The first study uses a system of innovation perspective that recognises disciplines in the form of norms regarding roles in the innovation system and the national innovation system in the form of New Zealand’s knowledge-based development. These perspectives are used to examine organisational actors’ participation in public debates about biotechnology. The second study examines how interactive learning in the innovation system and knowledge-based development influence firms’ knowledge processes in the form of communication channel use. The second research question is addressed by two studies using a practice-based view that recognises the situated nature of learning and knowing. One study focuses on individuals’ search practices for innovation and explores how these are influenced by firms’ geographic and relational location and emergent cluster life-stage. The other study concentrates on individuals’ selection practices for innovation and explores when and why varying forms of geographic and relational location influence them.