Title: Industrial clusters as drivers of revealed technological advantages of regions: the case of the Swiss chemical and pharmaceutical industries

Authors: Cyril Cudré-Mauroux; Philippe Gugler

Addresses: University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland ' University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland

Abstract: Clusters, since Marshall, have been identified as drivers of productivity because of the specialisation of the companies that form these clusters. Given that the productivity and competitiveness of firms is strongly dependent on their innovative capabilities, particular attention has been devoted to the role of clusters as facilitators of innovation. Our hypothesis states that industrial clusters, reflecting labour specialisation, induce regional technological advantages reflecting innovation specialisation. Cluster mapping is mainly reliant on the Location Quotient (LQ), as an indicator of relative specialisation based on employment data. The Revealed Technological Advantage (RTA) reflects the innovative specialisation of industries located in a specific region. The objective of this paper is to compare the LQ with the RTA in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries within the Swiss territory. The correlation analysis reveals a strong positive relationship between the two indicators. However, when considering only the chemical industry, the result is not statistically significant.

Keywords: industrial clusters; relative specialisation; cluster mapping; competitiveness; innovation specialisation; location quotient; revealed technological advantages; patents; employment; chemical industry.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2023.133961

European Journal of International Management, 2023 Vol.21 No.3, pp.440 - 459

Received: 26 Jan 2022
Accepted: 10 Mar 2022
Published online: 06 Oct 2023 *

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