Cognitive Proximity, Institutional Proximity And Cluster Innovation

As the important carrier of science and technology achievements transformation and an important part of national innovation system, industrial cluster has become the motivation of national or regional competitiveness and sustained economic growth. As the main way of cluster enterprise competitiveness and the driving force of cluster sustainable development, the importance of cluster innovation to industrial clusters emerges gradually.Combined the theoretical discussion with micro empirical research, this paper argues the inter-relationship between cognitive proximity, institutional proximity and the performance of the cluster innovation. Referring to the theory of complex adaptive system, an agent-based modeling and simulation is established using the top-down analysis and down-top modeling method through the Matlab simulation platform. This model simulates partner selection of cluster enterprises, interactive learning and knowledge system evolution, exploring the interactive influence mechanism between cognitive proximity, institutional proximity and cluster innovation performance in the learning process. The simulation results reveals the micro behavior of enterprises as well as macro "emergent properties" of industrial cluster innovation, and further deepen the research between multi-dimensional proximity and the cluster innovation.This research mainly reaches the following conclusion:(1) this study further explores the cognitive proximity and institutional proximity on the interaction mechanism of cluster innovation performance and the results show an inverted u-shaped relationship between institutional proximity and cluster innovation performance wherever in cognitive and non-cognitive proximity;(2) this study confirms the theoretical analysis on the "lock-in" effect and shows that higher institutional proximity will be a larger negative impact on the cluster innovation performance;(3) this study finds that " small and medium enterprises" mode (knowledge in poisson distribution) relative to the " leading enterprises" pattern (knowledge in pareto distribution) of industrial clusters has more dynamic and more prominent innovation performance.The main contribution of this paper is to make up for a lack of the previous research on the relationship between different dimensions of proximity and cluster innovation performance. It verified the "lock-in" effect of cluster innovation due to too high institutional proximity, and promoted the proximity and cluster innovation mechanism in theory research through the simulation experiment.This study has stronger practical revelations and policy guidance value for improving the cluster’s capacity for independent innovation, and promoting their sustainable upgrade. Certainly, constrained by the researchers’ academic literacy, this paper still has many deficiencies which need to be modified in the future research.