Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Clusters

How to build an industrial cluster?

This is one of the central questions in this blog and in my research. This is not only a question of top-down policy for national or municipal governments, but a quest to find out how these fascinating clusters of industrial activity actually form and evolve.

To review some of the recipes to create a cluster that are often mentioned in the literature:

1.    Industry, government and education should work together and influence each other 
2.    Finance: VCs, consultants, financial organizations should be around
3.    Law firms and IP consulting should help to clear the legal issues
4.    PROs: universities and research institutes should be around to continuously produce new knowledge and offer fresh, young workforce
5.    Powerful and successful firms, or at least one, seems to be a key ingredient
6.    Dense local networks, with many bridges to other networks: the region should be open to the world
7.    Good Infrastructure and accessibility (+ good restaurants, bars, livable environment, weather)
8.    An environment where it is easy to fail and easy to recreate firms: need to evolve firms
9.    Free flow of ideas, tools, good networking possibilities
10.  Large labor mobility (human capital, social capital) is often said to be a major element
11.  Necessity for collaboration (cannot be done in one single organization)
12.  Integrating scientific and commercial instead of separating it
13. Heterogeneous institutions and cross-institutional influences

And many others...

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