Knowledge broker: a longitudinal Analysis

High local concentration of small and large companies operating in a certain industry is usually justified by the presence of a social context that fosters information sharing, circulation of expertise, enforcement of shared values. This social context can be represented as a network of relationships (embedded ties) whose content is not limited to formal and instrumental exchange but involves also informal and social ties. The objective of this paper is to assess the usefulness of an Innovation Pole, an institutionalized arrangement that takes the role of innovation broker by fostering cooperative agreements with the aim of developing the competitiveness of a given territory. The data on which we base our analyses were collected through structured questionnaires to more than 50 high-tech companies aggregated to the Polo ICT in the Abruzzo region.