Assortativity and Hierarchy in Localized R&D Collaboration Networks

One of the challenges of innovative clusters relies on their ability to overlap technological domains in order to maintain their growth path along the cycle of technological markets. The paper studies two particular structural properties of collaboration networks that provide new insights for understanding this overlapping process. On the one hand, the degree distribution of knowledge networks captures the level of hierarchy within networks. It gives a first measure of the ability of networked organisations to coordinate their actions. On the other hand, the degree correlation captures the level of assortativity of networks. It gives a measure of the ability of knowledge to flow between highly and poorly connected organisations. We propose to combine these simple statistical measures of network structuring in order to study the parameters window that allow localized knowledge networks combining technological lock-in with regional lock-out.