ABSTRACT
This chapter explores challenges in the collaboration between companies in the oil and gas equipment supplier cluster in Agder, Norway. It analyses how this changing mode of innovation by key companies affects collaboration and collaborative advantages in the cluster. The focus on co-operation is related to an understanding of innovation activity as an interactive and socially and culturally embedded process. The chapter analyses aspects of collaborative relations in the Agder equipment supplier industry through the lenses of modes of innovation. The mode of innovation in the oil and gas industry, and in the Agder equipment supplier cluster, can be described as a classical example of a Doing, Using, Interacting (DUI) industry. Even if the OBMs have some characteristics with the Science, Technology, Innovation (STI) mode of innovation, people regard these companies as not being STI innovators. The answers indicate that the OBMs have changed towards what we have denoted as the CCI mode of innovation, where the companies combine experience and scientific-based knowledge.
