Frans Boekema, Tilburg University and Radboud University Nijmegen, Tilburg, The Netherlands, Roel Rutten, Tilburg University, Department of Organisation Studies, Tilburg, The Netherlands
Long-term effects of short-term collaboration on product development - The case of the Eindhoven clusters (assigned to theme
Project-based organization are seen as ideal mechanism to create new knowledge and, hence, to facilitate product development. Project-based organizations are temporary organizations designed to perform a specific task, which often concerns new product development. Project-based organization consist of a small number of companies who together work on the development of a new product. When the new product is developed, that is, when the objective of the project is achieved, the organization is dissolved. Consequently, project-based organizations are temporary organizations (e.g., Grabher 2002) The use of such temporary organizations has become widespread in the business community. Temporary organizations have a number of features that make them highly suitable for new knowledge creation. Firstly, they are very flexible organizations, which allows them to quickly respond to challenges and opportunities in their environment. Secondly, because the knowledge that is crucial to new product development is often tacit, temporary organization provides a good context in which to exchange that tacit knowledge between the partners involved. Thirdly, the organizational structure of temporary organizations is usually flat which allows for intensive and frequent communication between the members of the organization. This, too, facilitates knowledge exchange between them. Fourthly, temporary organizations are separated from their parent organizations, which gives them the autonomy to pursue their goals on their own terms. This autonomy is important because, in this way, “regular” activities do not interfere with the activities of the temporary organizations and because autonomy motivates the people in the temporary organizations. (e.g., Hobday 2000, Ludin and Söderholm 1995). The assumption is that companies who participate in such short-term collaboration will enjoy long-term benefits as well. The will not only have developed a new product, a short-term outcome, from which they can reap financial gains, but it is assumed that this strengthens the company’s competitiveness. After all, it will have acquired new knowledge, and perhaps new skills, which it can use on future product development projects, plus it will have learned how to perform product development. However, this assumption has never been tested empirically. Under the umbrella of their regional innovation strategies, many European regions have financially supported temporary collaboration between companies on product development with EU money. Although the short-term outcomes of these projects are well documented, the long-term effects are not. One example of such a policy scheme is the “Cluster Scheme” in the Eindhoven region. The clusters are, in fact, temporary organizations consisting of three to five companies, usually SMEs, who collaborate on new product development. These clusters exist for two years on average, the time it takes to develop a new product. From 1994 through 2004 about 100 such clusters have been started – by now, most of them have been dissolved. In early 2005 a project was started to research all 100 clusters and to establish the long-term effects of them for the companies involved, in terms of: economic effects, learning effects and networking effects. Economic effects pertains, for example, to job growth and growth of turnover, learning effects include acquiring new knowledge and skills, and network effects pertain to establishing new innovation linkages with third parties. By comparing the performance of the companies involved on the above criteria with their performance on the same criteria at the start of their cluster projects, we can empirically establish the long-term effects of the short-term collaboration in the clusters. We can speak of long-term effects because, in most case, a number of years have elapsed since the dissolving of the cluster. Furthermore, by comparing the performance of the companies involved in the clusters with the average performance of manufacturing SMEs in the Eindhoven region, we can establish if the “cluster companies” fared better than the region in general. After all, that was the idea behind the Eindhoven cluster scheme in the first place, to strengthen the performance of manufacturing SMEs in the region. In other words, the research will allow us to say something on the effectiveness of this particular policy instrument of the innovation programme for the Eindhoven region. At the Aalborg conference we will present the preliminary findings of the above research. By that time, we expect to have the results for 15 to 20 of the 100 clusters involved.
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(copyright Gunther Maier) |