Constructing Innovativeness in New-Media Start-Up Firms

Abstract

We focus on the social construction of innovativeness in the context of project teams and interfirm networks among new-media start-up firms in Silicon Alley, Manhattan. The analysis is based on a total of thirty-four interviews with firm executives and other informants. A brief discussion of the historical and structural context of the research project is followed by an exposition of the theoretical framework, that is, the theory of industrial districts and the hypothesized connection between innovativeness and interactivity. In each of the three subsequent sections of the paper, the empirical findings are presented and analyzed: the grounded conceptions of innovativeness, the two main variants of project organization (self-organized versus managerially coordinated project teams), and the varieties of interfirm networks such as transactional and mixed networks. Other networking practices documented are client relations and hiring. We consider the effect of state-level legal infrastructure and economic deregulation on the business culture of interfirm networking, information sharing, and innovativeness.

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