Cooperation and local economic development: proactive actions in the ICT clusters of Curitiba and Coimbra, Portugal

Abstract

The general objective of this article is to analyse the behaviour of actions, cooperative processes, public policies and universities in the generation and diffusion of innovations that take place in the Information and Communication Technology Cluster of Coimbra (called Instituto Pedro Nunes) and of Curitiba (called Arranjo Produtivo Local de Software). Through interviews, it is sought to verify how the two agglomerations are organized in terms of governance, search for knowledge and learning among the agents, as well as the perspectives of local development. The theoretical framework follows the neoschumpeterian approach. It is tried to show that the actions for the local development, as in these two cases, depend on the proactive attitudes of the involved agents and that, therefore, the organization and boosting of the development do not occur spontaneously. Obviously, as it will be seen, the environment matters and, therefore, agents and actions are configured according to their own possibilities and dynamics. The example of the IPN brings to light some elements that can be evaluated by the APL in terms of actions for the expansion of its dynamism.

Keywords:
Cluster; Public policy; Innovation; Interaction; Cooperation; Information and Communication Technology (ICT); University-enterprise