Knowledge diffusion at business events: The mechanism

Business events are considered to be innovation spaces. From the perspective of temporary clusters, we view a business event as a system and take leading trade fairs (TFs) as examples to explain the mechanism of knowledge diffusion at business events. Results based on 95 semi-structured interviews show the following: ① the type of knowledge disseminated at TFs, where the temporary proximity of new products and professionals serves as a knowledge supplier, is termed “apparent tacitness”; ② TFs are “new-oriented” communities consisting of professionals in cognitive proximity-the precondition for efficiently absorbing knowledge; ③ knowledge is diffused in horizontal and vertical ways on the basis of intensive and diverse interactions among knowledge pools and knowledge objects. Based on key literature on knowledge management and clusters, this research enriches our current understanding of business events and underscores their irreplaceability and value in industry development.