Agglomeration, Structural Embeddedness, and Enterprises’ Innovation Performance: An Empirical Study of Wuhan Biopharmaceutical Industrial Cluster Network

Abstract

Industry cluster’s agglomeration effects facilitate higher productivity for enterprises located in the industry cluster. This paper examines the agglomeration effects of industry cluster on firm’s innovation performance through studying the network embeddedness of the biopharmaceutical companies using cross-sectional data from 2011 to 2015. Measuring the technological cooperation network with text analysis of the interfirm agreement among core enterprises, we found that betweenness centrality and clustering coefficient have statistically significant and positive effects on enterprise’s ability for technological innovation, while the influence from the constraint of structural holes is negative. Our results suggest that government should allow the leading enterprises to establish professional technology cooperation platforms and provide additional support to promote cooperation among firms.