Smart Development Principles of Knowledge Ecosystem in an Industrial Cluster

Abstract

This paper presents and analyses the principles to develop a knowledge ecosystem in the case of an industrial cluster – “a geographical concentration of interconnected companies, specialized suppliers, service providers, companies in related industries and associated institutions (trade / industry associations, universities, educational institutions) that compete but also cooperate” (Porter, 1990). In the scientific literature, knowledge ecosystem is relatively recent and less explored concept, which is mostly defined as a network of geographically co-located actors, primarily centred around a local university or another research organisation for knowledge search and creation (Almpanopoulou, 2019; Clarisse et al., 2014). Because industrial clusters are putting an emphasis on product commercialisation and creating value (business or innovation ecosystem), the development of knowledge ecosystem more or less reflects a quite fragmental point of view – it is sometimes understood simply as having an university or a research institute among the cluster members and organising particular training seminars, while cluster members may remain individualistic and passive regarding mutual knowledge sharing and creation (Jucevičius, Grumadaitė, Jucevičienė and Čeičytė, 2019). However, in this paper knowledge ecosystem is understood as a precondition of innovation and business ecosystem in order to deal with complex and wicked problems (Andersson and Törnberg, 2019). In addition, smart development is explored expanding digitalisation boundaries, while understanding a social system through the dimensions of agility, network-based, sustainability, learning, innovativeness (Jucevičius and Jucevičienė, 2017).