Focal firms as technological gatekeepers within industrial districts: knowledge creation and dissemination in the italian packaging industry

This paper examines how knowledge is created and transferred among firms within a geographical bounded industrial cluster. Using patent data from the automatic packaging machinery industrial district in the region Emilia-Romagna in Northern Italy, we first provide an empirical test of the widely diffused (and rarely measured) assumption that knowledge generated by cluster-based firms more easily flows within the cluster than outside it. Then, we advance that leading firms within the cluster assume the role of “gatekeepers” in driving the processes of new knowledge creation and diffusion. They introduce external technological novelties in the cluster and enact new useful knowledge production locally, thus enhancing international competitive capabilities of all firms in the cluster.