Industrial cluster are widely recognised as an economic viable entity, which is more innovative and more competitive than the market average of non-clustered competitors. Business support agencies and local governments recognise cluster formation as a sound strategy for economic growth. However, clusters are self organising and thus, it is difficult influence their growth and viability directly. Instead, it is more appropriate to create a sound cluster environment and infrastructure in which the self organisation process of clusters triggers well.
The self organising process takes place along the structural layers of a cluster, i.e. cluster management and cluster organisations, political, financial and academic institutions, as well further training centers. For the formation process these layers have to connect with each other through a network. Since networks enable the exchange of knowledge, the denser a network is, the higher the knowledge density is within that network. Using knowledge means applying it to a context, which constantly changes in a cluster just as much as it does within a network. As competencies are regarded as “dispositions of self-organising knowledge” (cf. Erpenbeck), a cluster with a high density network allows for a freer flow of competencies than a cluster with a low density network.
These “network competencies” demand from the structural layers to produce, offer and process the knowledge required by the network. Thus, instead of “pushing” knowledge into this system and trying to convince receiving entities of its necessity, it is required to “pull” the appropriate knowledge off this network thereby signalling its utility and making visible the value added by that network. The accumulation of this knowledge pull by the network structural layers maps the network’s knowledge preference.
In fully established business process networks there are plenty of network service providers with one network process orchestrator effectively coupling the available network resources. Network service providers are required to excel in their core competencies while network process orchestrators need to have detailed knowledge about each service provider as well as having the competency of utilising the network resources in the most effective way. By having a high degree of competence in organising the knowledge flows within the network, network orchestrators can offer on-demand highly diversifiable services, as a result of the complexity the network is able regulate, while supporting service providers in most effectively contributing towards the business process network. BPN and clusters have in common that through their network an emergent value is created.
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