Knowledge-intensive cooperation in regional production networks

Globalisation pose the necessity to cope with national and international competitors. In Europe, regional industry clusters like the Emilia Romagna in Italy or the automotive sector in Baden Württemberg in Germany established a good possibility to be competitive in the global market. Combining global trends and regional aspects in a co-operation leads to new forms of interaction between firms. The new co-operation form virtual cluster will be discussed in this publication. The Fraunhofer institute for industrial engineering (IAO) in Stuttgart (Germany) and the institute for enterprise cybernetics (IfU) in Mühlheim (Germany) studied relevances, potentials and risks of regional co-operations. The research took place in the context of the German BMBF project "Integration of heterogeneous knowledge in flexible production networks in specific, industrial district structures". The outcomes and the conclusion of this project will be discussed in this proposal.