Complexity and Organizational Change in the Coordination of Technological Knowledge: Evidence from the Automobile Cluster in Turin

The paper adopts a complexity perspective to understand the transformations in the organizational forms that coordinate the generation and dissemination of technological knowledge within firms. Complexity theory provides the framework to understand the evolution and transformation of economic systems. These are seen as emergent processes brought about by changes in the structure of interactions among actors. Changes in those interactions are steered by the modification in the pattern of specialisation and differentiation in the capabilities and technological skill of economic actors. The paper illustrates these elements through the evidence of the automobile cluster in Piedmont, in North-western Italy. This is characterized by the emergence of a distributed innovation platform, which is seen as a major organizational innovation in the organization of diffused technological capabilities.