This book highlights the importance of clusters for the competitiveness of companies and is divided into three interrelated parts. The first part focuses on localization economics, cluster theory, the role of innovation, and innovation partnerships in cluster formations. The second part of the volume presents original research carried out from 2018 to 2020 in the field of both natural clusters and organized clusters. In addition to examining the impact of cluster membership, the contributions also focus on additional factors that may affect the financial performance of companies. In the third part, an additional survey and case studies are presented, to examine the specifics of family businesses in selected industrial districts of the textile, glass, and jewelry industries. A broader overview of the development of dominant industries in the selected districts is provided, for an easier understanding of the relationships of competition among companies and locations in the business clusters. The book evaluates implications for microeconomic and macroeconomic policies and provides proposals for corporate inter-organizational behavior. This volume addresses scholars and researchers of economics, business, and management, as well as policy-makers and practitioners interested in a better understanding of innovation and performance drivers of business clusters.

In Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Business Clusters, Panos Piperopoulos provides a comprehensive introduction to what entrepreneurship is all about, how and why entrepreneurs innovate and how innovation systems operate. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) constitute the backbone of most economies, so the author examines their characteristics and the crucial role played by the owners and entrepreneurs who innovate to ensure the survival and continued growth of their firms. He also includes the particular phenomena that arise where the entrepreneurs are either female or from ethnic groups, or where the context is that of a developing region or country. The importance of co-operative strategic alliances and networks between firms is discussed, along with how these strengthen SMEs' competitiveness. The concept of open innovation has been proposed as a new paradigm for the management of innovation and the author presents a hypothetical model for enhancing the competitiveness and performance of SMEs by properly utilizing employees' creative potential, emotional intelligence, tacit knowledge and innovative ideas. The contemporary model of business clusters, involving partnerships with competitors, agents, universities, research centres and local, regional and national governments is discussed. The ways, means and methods through which SMEs' competitiveness and innovation can be enhanced within business clusters is illustrated by cases that identify four types of SMEs, that behave differently and play different roles in the networks and clusters of which they form a part, but all of whose performance and competitiveness is a function of their position and role in the wider scheme of things.

This book aims to bind together latest theories on creation of innovative clusters and operating modalities, empirical analysis, and several new formal models describing cluster formation and dynamics. Another objective of the book is the analysis of the role of the innovative activities on the economic performances of the firm during the crisis, focusing the attention on the complementarities existing among the innovative dimensions, hypothesizing a positive role of integrated innovative strategies in increasing the firm resilience to the challenges brought by the economic crisis. The part of empirical analysis contains a comprehensive survey of different international legislation sources useful for deep studies of influential factors and peculiarities. In this book international statistical reports on economic activity and business cases of successful application of clusters model are described for Western Europe and BRIC. This book also presents authors findings in the domain of mathematical and simulation modeling of the major elements of cluster and innovation management.

In the global economy, regional development and innovation are increasingly an imperative to increase the competitive edge of EU economies. While European regions are different in many ways, the innovation capacity of regions, clusters and firms is what makes them capable of building up new and diversified pathways for sustainable growth. For this reason, Innovation Drivers and Regional Innovation Strategies looks to analyze different knowledge drivers (e.g. entrepreneurial or policy-orientation; scientific and practice-based knowledge modes; institutional innovation support) that influence the innovative and competitive capacity of regions, clusters and firms in Europe. The aim of this volume is to develop an in-depth understanding of these drivers and their implications for the way in which regional and cluster growth may be upgraded. Innovation Drivers and Regional Innovation Strategies examines the construction of new innovation pathways for regions and clusters in different geographical contexts. The main themes are cluster evolution, regional innovation systems and business innovation modes and capabilities. The objectives are centred on exploring the logic and mechanisms that can be activated as a means to promote innovation and competitiveness within regions and, within these, across and within firms. Aimed at researchers and academics in the field, this is a thoughtful and innovative new volume that helps define the academic debate.

The world's leading experts contribute to our understanding of regional innovation, cluster formation and the factors that influence regional productivity and innovative performance. The text improves our understanding of the reasons why, how and where innovation clusters emerge, as well as the factors that determine their respective success or failure. In doing so, it provides a timely and comprehensive picture on innovation, location, networks and clusters as important means in an environment of intensifying interregional competition. The book is written for professional researchers as well as for students and practitioners in politics, business and consultancy.

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 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.

"In The Capacity to Innovate, Sarah Giest provides insight into the collaborative and absorptive capacities needed to provide public support to local innovation through cluster organizations. The book offers a detailed view of the vertical, multi-level, and horizontal dynamics in clusters and cluster policy and addresses how they are managed and supported. Using the biotechnology field as an example, Giest highlights challenges in the collaborative efforts of public bodies, private companies, and research institutes to establish a successful eco-system of innovation in this sector. The book argues that cluster policy in collaboration with cluster organizations should focus on absorptive and collaborative capacity elements missing in the cluster context in order to improve performance. Currently, governments operate at different levels--local to supranational--in order to support clusters, and cluster policies are often pursued in parallel to other programs. As the book shows, this can lead to uncoordinated efforts and ineffective cluster strategies. Relational dynamics are often overlooked when working backwards from performance indicators, since their effects are largely indirect but Giest demonstrates that both the cluster organization and the cluster eco-system play a role. The Capacity to Innovate advocates for a coordinated effort by government and cluster organizations to support capacity elements lacking within the specific cluster context."--

The international fragmentation of economic activities – from research and design to production and marketing – described through the lens of the global value chain (GVC) approach impacts the structure and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) agglomerated in economic clusters. The consolidation of GVCs ruled by global lead firms and the recession of 2008-09 exacerbated the pressures on cluster actors that based their competitive advantage on local systems, spurring an increasing heterogeneity, both across and within clusters, that is still overlooked in the literature. Drawing on detailed studies of different industries and countries, Local Clusters in Global Value Chains shows the co-evolutionary trajectories of clusters and GVCs, and the role of firms and their strategies in organizing manufacturing and innovation activities in the context of ongoing technological shifts. The book explores the tension between place-based variables and global drivers of change, and the possibility for territories containing such clusters to prosper in the new global scenario. By adopting insights from the GVC framework and management studies, the book discusses how the internationalization strategies of firms create opportunities as well as constraints for adaptive upgrading in clusters. This book is of interest to both researchers and policy-makers who are interested in the dynamic sources of competitive advantage in the global economy.