Capacidade de inovação em clusters: caracterização da produção acadêmica e proposta de uma tipologia

Abstract

Innovation is an important aspect for the development of competitive advantages in companies. Considering the literature on clusters, they promote cooperation and competition, making companies located in agglomerations more easily access technology and knowledge, developing innovation capability. Therefore, to understand the relationship between innovation capability and clusters, the objective is to analyze the academic production in journals on cluster innovation capability. The study was developed from two databases: Web Of Science and Scopus, considering the entire period available in both. The academic production was characterized from a bibliometric study, conducted in the Bibliometrix software. In order to deepen the data analysis and develop the typology of innovation capacity in clusters, the analysis of citation, co-citation and bibliographic coupling methods was carried out using the VOSviewer software. The results showed 236 articles, published in 152 journals from 2001 to 2021. The textual corpus of the research is developed by 584 authors and co-authors, linked to 44 countries, highlighting the productivity of China, the United Kingdom and the United States. For the bibliometric characterization, Lotka's Law showed a more isolated publication of the authors, demonstrating that the most productive author in the period (Zhao, S.) published four works. For the analysis of the journals' reputation, Bradford's Law characterized the productive zones, demonstrating that the core is formed by 17 journals, with Sustainability being the one with the highest number of published articles. The other two zones are less productive in terms of number of articles, but condense the largest number of journals, with 58 in zone two and 77 in zone three. For the thematic analysis, Zipf's Law was used, identifying that, as expected, themes related to innovation, capability, and regional predominance. However, the word cloud also highlights aspects of clusters, networks, knowledge, technology and publications linked to China. In the typology, five thematic clusters were identified and proposed. After reading the works, the following denomination was elaborated: C1: Technology and innovation; C2: Determinants of innovation capability; C3: Knowledge creation and transfer; C4: Network collaboration; C5: Regional collaboration. For all these reasons, it is important to analyze the factors that contribute to the innovation capacity in clusters, analyzing the effects of agglomeration and interaction in networks. The results contribute to the theoretical deepening of the theme and outlines of a research agenda.