The past few decades have witnessed the growing interest in the phenomenon of industrial clusters. There is a strong need for the firms located in the cluster to innovate, i.e., to renew their technology, structure of the products as well as policies and practices followed by the organization. Seo (2006) states that knowledge, learning and innovation are the most important factors for competitiveness in the globalizing and knowledge-based economy.
Porter (1990) defined that the presence of cluster helps increase information flow and the likelihood of innovation and new businesses from spin-offs, downstream, upstream and in related industries. This issue has been researched by regional and urban economists and they have provided theoretical analysis of industrial location choice (Beckman and Thisse, 1986). Research shows that innovative process has changed considerably in the past few years (Todtling, 1998). It is found that innovation process has shifted from a linear process towards an independent and evolutionary model where a number of elements are involved.
Innovation is, thus, carried out by regular interaction of firms with suppliers, policy institutions, technology, transfer agencies, customers, employees, competitors, and educational institutions. These elements help in creating a system at various levels. The present paper aims to study the pattern of innovation of the firms located in the sports goods cluster in Jalandhar, India.
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