Cross-cutting knowledge organizations as leverages of entrepreneurial activity

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Motivated by the possibility of obtaining relational rents (Dyer & Singh, 1998; Lavie, 2006), firms have used inter-firm networks as knowledge leverages. But which type of ties enhances firm performance? This work analyzes firm's performance in an emergent entrepreneurial activity of winery clusters in non-traditional areas such as Michigan, Missouri, New York and Vermont. Research results confirm previous findings (McDermott et al., 2009) that access to a variety of knowledge resources depend not simply on whether firms are tied to a diversity of alters, but rather to those who act as social and network bridges, but in this case, and different from previous studies, industry associations play this connecting role. This type of organization in the wine industry act as a knowledge broker and connect wineries from different parts of the same state, which would not otherwise connect due to distance and transaction costs. Moreover, it can be said that they offer cross-cutting knowledge, a type of applied knowledge that cuts vertical and horizontal relationships intra and inter-industr