Network Structure of an Industrial Cluster: Electronics in Toronto

Abstract

The literature on the theory of regional industrial success, including that focused on regional innovation systems, provides the conceptual foundation for this exploration of the extent to which firms in clusters of advanced technology industry depend on interregional sources for a wide variety of knowledge inputs to support innovation. The substantive focus is the electronics cluster of the Toronto region, Canada's largest manufacturing center. A small, stratified sample of establishments drawn from this cluster is used to verify the importance of external sources of material inputs, and other knowledge sources, and the strength of distant market connections. Interregional and local collaboration vary in importance as a result of scale-dependent resource differences between firms and in response to choices associated with foreign rather than domestic ownership. The results support the rejection of simple models of clusters and learning regions in which internal connections are privileged over interregional and international transactions operating either between or within firms.