Firms’ collaboration strategies for digitalisation: A social network analysis of the forestry industry and related ecotourism services

Using social network analysis, we analyse a territorial innovation system in the Uruguayan forestry sector and related ecotourism services. We analyse two different firms’ collaborative strategies: intermediary (i.e. bridging disconnected nodes) and well-connected (i.e. linking to highly central nodes). We explore how these strategies affect both a firm’s individual innovation and the collective dynamics of the territorial system. Based on data from a survey on 82 firms and support organisations, we reconstruct and analyse the collaboration network and estimate the effects of collaboration strategies on the firms’ probability of adopting advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Our results show a positive effect of the well-connected collaboration strategy (measured by eigenvector centrality) on the adoption of advanced ICTs, while the intermediary strategy (measured by betweenness centrality) has a negative effect on the probability of adopting advanced ICTs. At the same time, in the overall structure of the network, we observe a critical role of intermediaries and support organisations, mainly public actors. These results show the relevance of collaboration and the trade-offs intermediaries face, highlighting the importance of public organisations in fostering knowledge flows between firms.