From regional clusters to global networks


Book Description

In this new book, instead of a simple opposition to the new Chinese expansionist policy ("One Belt One Road Initiative"), Professor Mauricio Sousa argues that the European Union should start to formulate strategies to expand parts of productive processes of its industries to new markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America, in partnership with business groups from these developing countries. Thus, avoiding a new trade war, Eastern and Western countries would benefit from the coordination of development initiatives for these new markets, with many developing countries having opportunity to receive technologies and to train their workforce to new production patterns (such as Industrie 4.0), while expanding European, North American and Asiatic supply chains, optimizing new port and railway infrastructures that China has been building around the world. European Digital Shipping companies could play a key role in this process, since they are increasingly being able to apply Blockchain and other new technology standards in order to identify business opportunities and to plan new logistics channels, becoming a strategic link between European and North American industries and new regions in developing countries to where they could expand, accelerating the formation of more consumer markets, integrating regional clusters into global production networks.




Clusters, Networks and Innovation


Book Description

Examining the role of the much-vaunted concepts of regional clusters in the prosperity and economic expansion of countries, this work looks at the different experiences of industrial districts and high-tech regions such as Silicon Valley, Boston's biotech region, and Hsinchu-Taipei.




The Globalization of Regional Clusters


Book Description

Addressing the role of regional clusters in the context of ongoing globalization, this timely book investigates the two seemingly competing trends of globalization and localization from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. International case studies offer pioneering insights into the internationalization process of regional clusters and the effect of this on regional as well as firm performance.




The Economics of Regional Clusters


Book Description

This important new book takes a critical view on regional industry clusters, in particular their identification and formation, and the policies which help create and support them.




Innovation Networks and Clusters


Book Description

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.




Linking Industries Across the World


Book Description

Originally published in 2005. This book examines how regional industries use different networks on various geographical scales in order to withstand increasing competition in a globalising world. It argues that new forms of global governance of networked industries are emerging, in particular in those areas that have only recently been incorporated into the global economy such as Eastern Europe, Asia and Southern Africa. The book addresses a number of issues, including the different forms of institutional arrangements that contribute to the formation of heterogeneous global industrial networks. It also raises the issue of national institutions that still matter in network formation. The focus of the book is on how to improve regional and sectoral competitiveness in a global context and it suggests this is best achieved by a close analysis of global linkages, an evolutionary perspective on processes taking place, and a more differentiated view on globalisation.




Global Networks and Local Linkages


Book Description

This volume offers an initial attempt to develop a meaningful cluster typology that accounts for fundamental differences in institutional linkages, knowledge dimensions, and stages of cluster growth."--Jacket.




Innovation System Frontiers


Book Description

Recent economic transformations in the world economy are progressing in two divergent directions – international production fragmentation and industrial agglomeration. Based on extensive data analysis and using models of interdependencies between key economies, this book analyses innovation systems that cross national borders. It is shown that technological complexity is an important factor in the formation of highly specific production networks, and why, for a number of production systems, fragmentation and clustering are two sides of the same coin. By outlining the picture of a world economy structured around networks of clusters and joined together through systems of linkages of components, people and knowledge flows, the author helps to promote a better understanding of recent economic transformations.




Clusters, Networks, and Innovation


Book Description

Governments and regional authorities often express the belief that the key to prosperity and economic expansion is related to the ability of countries to sustain regional clusters of competitiveness and innovation. The book reviews the most important conceptual approaches to the analysis of the emergence, growth and evolution of clusters of innovation. Drawing from the different experiences of industrial districts and high-tech regions such as Silicon Valley, Boston's biotech region, and Hsinchu-Taipei, the contributions in this book offer a broad interpretative framework and policy implications for the creation and strengthening of competitive clusters. Themes include: · the wide variety of existing clusters and the diversity in their emergence and growth; · the international mobility of factors and demand linkages; · the role of different network types and the social setting; · the accumulation of capabilities in key large actors and the importance of spinoffs and new firm formation; · the role of different learning regimes and sectoral specificities; · the importance of social networks, labour mobility, and face-to-face contacts as vehicles of knowledge spillovers. Broad implications are drawn for the design of policies to encourage successful economic clusters in developed and developing clusters.




Innovation Clusters and Interregional Competition


Book Description

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.