Research On The Process And Mechanism Of The Collective Learning In Industrial Clusters

With globalization and the knowledge economy, regions with fast development feature new characteristic of industrial clusters. In many developed and developing countries there exists some competitive clusters, which boost the relevant industry quality and competitiveness and the competitiveness of cities and regional economy as well. However, not every industrial cluster can achieve the competitive advantage and maintain it for a long period because of internal and external causes. There are a lot of reasons to explain it, among which the collective learning in industrial clusters is of importance. So it is necessary to have a deep research on it, which will be of great help to the development of industrial clusters.This paper focuses on four aspects of the collective learning, namely its role, causes, process and mechanism. On the basis of plenty of relevant documents and materials home and abroad, this paper begins with the conception of the collective learning and its characteristics and also analyzes its role in the development of industrial clusters. The theories of transaction cost, resource,knowledge spillover and synergy are deployed to analyze the causes of the collective learning. In order to well understand the collective learning process, the paper explains it from two angles, the cluster and the clustering member, with knowledge perspective. And the factors, which affect the collective learning process, are analyzed and learning from outside industrial clusters as well. The collective learning cannot live without its mechanism. The preconditions to establish the collective learning mechanism and their roles are analyzed. And with these preconditions and related institutional and technical background, the collective learning mechanism consists of the impetus mechanism, the knowledge-flowing mechanism, the knowledge-sharing mechanism and the systematical education and train mechanism, and particular measures from clustering enterprises, cluster agents and public sectors and related sectors of the local government to construct it are analyzed. Last but not least, the paper analyzes the phenomenon of the collective learning in China Optical Valley in Wuhan and shows that the phenomenon is not obvious and the collective learning mechanism has not come into being. And then related policies and suggestions are presented.Accompanied with the theoretical exploration, empirical study is also conducted in the paper. For the role the collective learning played in the development of industrial clusters, it is necessary to construct the collective learning mechanism in the industrial cluster, especially China Optical Valley in Wuhan, which is still on the early clustering stage and needs greatly to bring the collective learning into play.