Collaboration strategies for digitalization in the Uruguayan forestry industry : a social network analysis

We analyse advanced ICTs acquisition in the territorial innovation system of the forestry and ecotourism industry in Uruguay, considering both firms and support organizations related to these sectors. Using social network analysis, we identify that firms follow different strategies of collaboration which generate distinct collective outcomes and imply varing individual costs and require diverse firms’ capabilities. We capture two different firms’ collaborative strategies by means of centrality indexes: intermediary (betweenness centrality) and well-connected (eigenvector centrality). While the latter captures a highly connected position in the network but without the costs of intermediating between third parties, the former does capture an intermediary role, which implies a central position in the network, but may entail costs for the holder. We estimate the effects of these collaboration strategies on the firms’ probability to adopt advanced ICTs. Our results show a positive effect of the well- connected collaboration strategy on the adoption of advanced ICTs while intermediary strategy has a negative effect on the probability to adopt advanced ICT. At the same time, a critical role of support organisations, mainly public, in the structure of the network can be observed. Taken together, these results show the relevance of collaboration as well as the trade-offs faced by intermediaries, highlighting the importance of public organisations in fostering knowledge flows between firms.