I acknowledge with gratitude the support that I received for my research during 1999/2000, when I held a fellowship at the International Center for Economic Research (ICER, Turin), as well as the continuous support that I received from the Institut pour le Management de la Recherche et de l?Innovation (IMRI) at the University Paris Dauphine. I am particularly grateful to Valérie Fleurette and …

The importance of knowledge as a key source of competitive advantage is now well established in management studies, as suggested by the growing literature focusing on knowledge creation and transfer (Kogut and Zander, 1992: Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995: Strategic Management Journal Winter Special Issue, 1996). However, although concepts such as tacit knowledge and organizational knowledge unify mu…