Complementary Innovations And Generative Relationships: An Ethnographic Study

The paper presents an in-depth investigation on a promising innovation, kervit, in the histolical context of the booming ceramic industrial district of SassuoloScandiano (Emilia-Romagna region in Italy). The kervit was introduced and patented by a brilliant inventor operating within, and then leading, one of the first cdc companies of the booming district The innovation had strong technological advantages aqd good market potentialities, but in the middle of the 1960s, right in the stage of sharp growth of the ceramic district, it was unable to exploit its market success, nor was the inventor's company able to survive. The joint use of the ebographic mathod and the notion of generative relationships, put forward by Lane and Maxfield (1997), marks an original contribution in the analysis both of the emergence of learning processes within a local productive system and of the role of dynamic complemwtarities in fostering the innovation dynamics.