'This well-edited volume should be on the shelf of every regional development agency library. Its seventeen chapters written by 31 predominantly academic contributors are divided into four coherent sections: the first on cluster and network modelling, the next on empirical analysis, a third on case studies, finishing with two chapters on policy analysis and strategies.' - Tony Jackson, Journal of Economic Development This book provides a state-of-the-art overview of spatial industrial clusters and inter-firm networks. Given the prevailing political belief that clusters can be a major vehicle for economic development and growth, it is important to have a sound understanding of clusters and how they emerge, grow, eventually stagnate and disappear. It is also vital to know when and how to apply policy measures to support cluster development in order to increase economic welfare. This book illuminates both the theoretical and empirical issues relating to clusters and inter-firm networks, and presents a number of interesting case studies from a variety of different countries.

In Economics, networks are increasingly used to describe the many links created between independent companies, as well as between them and other institutions (universities, banks, venture capital, etc.). In the current global and knowledge-based economy, they can be characterised as knowledge factories and knowledge boosters. They feed the internal processes of innovation (collaborative innovation) or the external processes of innovation, created by the propagation effects that come from inter-firm collaboration. The book explains how innovation networks are at the origin of the production of new knowledge that will be transformed and used in common as well as in separated production processes. This characteristic of networks as knowledge factories gives incentives to further investment in the production of knowledge and ensures the cumulativeness of the innovation process. Some of the authors clearly take a territorial point of view and study how clusters (in different parts of the world: Europe, Eastern Asia and North America) propelled by the quality of the innovation networks they enclose, can be characterised as knowledge pools into which the local actors will be able to draw to reinforce their individual and collective competitiveness. This book also includes analyses of the quality of the networks built within clusters, which may help their identification.

This book examines the inter-firm networks created by interlock coordination through shared directors (inter-board) and managers (inter-department) at various levels: whole aggregate, core vs. peripheral companies, and distribution by country and sector. Presenting an empirical case study on all the limited liability or stock companies of the aerospace industry in the European Union and its interlock partners worldwide, the authors shed new light on these forms of coordination. Moreover, they reveal the relevance of shared managers’ coordination and hybrid manager-director interlocks. The book applies advanced statistical and social network analysis alike by combining firms’ attributes (e.g. standard economic-financial parameters) and topological indices for firms (e.g. centrality and cluster measures). By conducting the analysis at both the aggregate network level and the cluster or corporate group level, the authors show how extensive and intensive the interlock forms of coordination are, especially when dealing with shared managers. By testing seven hypotheses concerning the research stream on board interlocks and (more broadly) inter-firm networks, the study offers new insights into the role of the financial sector, on the relations between interlock coordination and firms’ performance, on the role of geographical, technological and organizational proximity, and on the relations between interlock coordination and firms’ size. As such, this book will appeal to scholars of organization studies, business and management studies, industrial and evolutionary economics, and economic sociology, as well as officers and policymakers at anti-trust regulation institutions.

Karlsson has assembled a strong mix of papers that collectively provide a good sense of some of the latest research in the field. Edward Feser, Review of Regional Studies This is a book every regional scientist and spatial analyst should have on their bookshelf. Like most Handbook type publications it provides depth and breadth on the basics of the industrial clustering concept. However, unlike most of these type of collections, it goes beyond the foundation material to identify and speculate on questions that are emerging on the research frontiers such as at the intersection of cluster theory and agglomeration processes, knowledge spillovers and technology transfer not to mention the obvious link to economic development theory, policy and practice. Roger R. Stough, George Mason University, US This eclectic volume presents a host of methods to describe tendencies for the joint location of economic agents in space. And it illustrates useful applications of these concepts in diverse fields financial services, culture, tourism, and industry, to name just a few. John M. Quigley, University of California, US Clusters have increasingly dominated local and regional development policies in recent decades and the growing intellectual and political interest for clusters and clustering is the prime motivation for this Handbook. Charlie Karlsson unites leading experts to present a thorough overview of economic cluster research. Topics explored include agglomeration and cluster theory, methods for analysing clusters, clustering in different spatial contexts and clustering in service industries. Encompassing the developed economies of Europe and North America, the Handbook provides a basis for improving cluster policy formulation, interpretation and analyses. This comprehensive overview of research on economic clusters will be of interest to scholars and PhD students in (regional) economics, economic geography, regional planning and management as well as practitioners and policymakers at the national, regional and local levels involved in cluster formation and cluster management.

The book contains the Proceedings of the 2010 Conference of the Italian Systems Society. Papers deal with the interdisciplinary study of processes of changing related to a wide variety of specific disciplinary aspects. Classical attempts to deal with them, based on generalising approaches used to study the movement of bodies and environmental influence, have included ineffective reductionistic simplifications. Indeed changing also relates, for instance, to processes of acquisition and varying properties such as for software; growing and aging biological systems; learning/cognitive systems; and socio-economic systems growing and developing through innovations. Some approaches to modelling such processes are based on considering changes in structure, e.g., phase-transitions. Other approaches are based on considering (1) periodic changes in structure as for processes of self-organisation; (2) non-periodic but coherent changes in structure, as for processes of emergence; (3) the quantum level of description. Papers in the book study the problem considering its transdisciplinary nature, i.e., systemic properties studied per se and not within specific disciplinary contexts. The aim of these studies is to outline a transdisciplinary theory of change in systemic properties. Such a theory should have simultaneous, corresponding and eventually hierarchical disciplinary aspects as expected for a general theory of emergence. Within this transdisciplinary context, specific disciplinary research activities and results are assumed to be mutually represented as within a philosophical and conceptual framework based on the theoretical centrality of the observer and conceptual non-separability of context and observer, related to logically open systems and Quantum Entanglement. Contributions deal with such issues in interdisciplinary ways considering theoretical aspects and applications from Physics, Cognitive Science, Biology, Artificial Intelligence, Economics, Architecture, Philosophy, Music and Social Systems.

Explains how production networks and industrial clusters have played crucial roles in the industrial development of Indonesia and Malaysia (electronics industry), Singapore (biomedical science industry), and Thailand (automotive industry).

The spectacular economic performance of China, East Asia and India during the last ten years has ignited some profound changes in the world economy. The share of global demand, investments, trade and production of the traditional industrialized powers, the US, Europe and Japan, has gradually yet continuously declined. This rise of China also has implications for Latin America. On the one hand, booming Chinese demand for raw materials and food has sustained the economic performance of Latin America during the last decade. On the other hand, the competitiveness of China and as a hub for advanced manufacturing is threatening Latin America's attempt to diversify its economy from its dependence on the export of natural resource-based goods. Most Latin American countries are not however waiting passively for their economies to become ever more reliant on high prices for food, minerals and oil. Leveraging the economic and political stability that they achieved during the last decades, many countries in the region, such as Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Uruguay, are attempting to capture the growing market for knowledge intensive products and services by breeding their own Silicon Valleys. This book discusses the promotion of ICT clusters in Latin America by analyzing the development of the Costa Rican cluster in particular, an often celebrated case of successful policy in the region. Costa Rica, a small country traditionally known for its coffee and wildlife, managed to build an information technology cluster within ten years, becoming the leading producer of ICT per capita in Latin America. Studying the Costa Rican case provides a solid starting point for understanding the challenges of building ICT clusters in Latin America.

The Global Diamond Industry: Economics and Development brings together a collection of papers covering various aspects of the diamond industry including economics, law, history, sociology and development across two volumes.

'This volume is an important step in furthering the discussion about how cluster strategies work and the implications for theory and policy.' – Jennifer Clark, Review of Regional Studies The role of innovations and clusters has increasingly dominated local and regional development policies in recent decades. This authoritative and accessible Handbook considers important aspects of high-tech clusters, analyses insightful cluster case studies, and provides a number of recommendations for cluster policies. The chapters in this Handbook are written by international experts in the field and present evidence of the scope, effects, and potential of clusters as concentrations of innovative activities. The authors emphasize that cluster development is not the only option for local and regional development and argue that for cluster policies to be worthwhile, supporting policies in fields such as education, R&D, transportation, and communication infrastructure must accompany most cluster policies. Furthermore, several contributions stress that clusters often develop along a life cycle that may end with decline and even the disappearance of clusters. Consequently, this Handbook provides the basis for improving both research on innovation and clusters and the formulation and implementation of cluster policies. Furnishing the reader with rich, comprehensive discussion of innovations and clusters, this Handbook will be an essential source for researchers and academics in the field, as well as policymakers, planners and specialists, development experts and agencies, and consultants.

This impressive new book uniquely focuses on the phenomenon of media clusters and is designed to inform policymakers, scholars, and media practitioners about the underlying challenges of media firm agglomerations, their potential, and their effects. Including an array of distinguished contributors, this book explores the rationale and purpose of media clusters, how they compare with clusters in other industries, and the significant differences in characteristics, development processes and drivers among various media clusters worldwide. It incorporates perspectives from economic geography and economics, public development and industrial policy, organizational studies, entrepreneurship, as well as cultural and media studies, to provide a comprehensive view that provides critical insight into these clusters.