Inovatividade em clusters de negócios comerciais: um estudo sobre a relação entre a capacidade de inovação e a estrutura das redes sociais presentes nas redes de negócios

Resumo (EN)

Business clusters are a special type of business networks and call the attention of researchers and organizations around the world, because it shows that the geographical proximity of the companies that are part of the cluster allows them easier access to important factors for their competitiveness. Granovetter’s concept of embeddedness assumes a primacy of social relations on economic relations. Meanwhile the theories of diffusion of innovations, among them, the Rogers model passed, also to seek explanations about the potentially decisive factors to the extent of a particular adoption in a given social system. Therefore, the objective of this work is to contribute to the advancement of the understanding of innovation diffusion processes in business networks. In this way, the strategy adopted is the representation, in a structured way, of the configuration of the social system of relationships, through which diffuse the transactional content that, in this case are considered, in particular, the exchange of information and influence to the adoption of an innovation. The ability to innovate was set from a set of characteristics raised by research and the investigation is the influence of social structure (with its characteristics of centrality and density) as determining factors for the diffusion process. The research is directed to the acquisition of additional knowledge involving the relationship between the social structure of a commercial business cluster (networks) and the dynamics of diffusion of innovations. The methodology was based on a survey research. Because it is a research strategy which provides a numerical description of opinions or perceptions of a population with cross and feature that uses for this purpose structured questionnaires that will be applied during data collection, the strategy for the present work is considered quantitative. The cluster of commercial businesses considered as object of study of this work refers to the cluster of bars and restaurants in Vila Madalena (neighborhood located in the West of the capital of the State of São Paulo). A formal analysis of social networks was conducted for the cluster. About 70 bars and restaurants make up the network referred to today. Twenty five interviews were carried out with managers or owners of bars or restaurants in the cluster. The result was the mapping of a network with 68 organizations or companies that constitute the business network. The proposed model resulted in a simple linear regression between two variables – innovativeness and centrality – with 17% of power to the explanation of the variance of the dependent variable (innovativeness), considered to be statistically significant (p 0.05). In conclusion, the overall objective of the work was achieved, allowing to establish a meaningful relationship between the centrality and the innovativeness of the actors present in the commercial business cluster of bars and restaurants in Vila Madalena in São Paulo. However, it should be noted the need for further research on the topic.