Relational Knowledge Transfers

Relational Knowledge Transfers

An expert must train a novice. The novice initially has no cash, so he can only pay the expert with the accumulated surplus from his production. At any time, the novice can leave the relationship with his acquired knowledge and produce on his own. The sole reason he does not is the prospect of learning in future periods. The profit-maximizing relationship is structured as an apprenticeship, in ...

Online Appendix for Relational Knowledge Transfers

Here we show that, in the model considered in Section 5.1 in the text, Lemmas 1-2 and Proposition 1 remain valid.1 Recall that period t output is now f(Xt + xt) = f(Xt+1), while all other aspects of the model are unchanged. The novice’s outside option remains equal to 1 1−δf (Xt) . 2 Other than the modifications listed below, the proofs of Lemmas 1-2 and Proposition 1 are identical to before. (...

Trail of Knowledge Transfers

hy do firms and inventors tend to locate in dense, costly areas? One intriguing hypothesis is that such geographic clustering lets them benefit from local knowledge spillovers. As nobel laureate robert Lucas has noted, the benefits of one person’s knowledge spilling over to others play a central role in economic growth and the existence of cities: “What can people be paying Manhattan or downtow...

Learning Relational Knowledge

Explicit Knowledge Transfers in New Product Development

The literature on learning in new product development (NPD) documents the processes globally but is short on specifics. Knowledge levels are not clearly conceptualized, nor are there clear devices for documenting knowledge transfers in terms of knowledge levels. This paper presents the methods of a qualitative research approach for measuring knowledge transfer directly in terms of knowledge. Th...