Clusters for life or life cycles of clusters: in search of the critical factors of clusters' resilience

Abstract

This article investigates the driving forces behind the life cycles and resilience of technological clusters. It concentrates, in particular, on the combination of critical parameters which allows clusters to succeed in disconnecting their cycle from the cycle of the technologies they produce, in order to maintain stability and growth in unstable economic environments. Three propositions on location decision externalities, the life cycle of composite technologies and the structural properties of knowledge networks are developed and introduced in an inclusive study of cluster trajectories. Discussions show that resilient clusters are those that combine network and external audience effects in location decision-making and evolve towards a specific core/periphery and disassortative structure of knowledge interactions along the knowledge and market phases. Understanding these pathways could be at the heart of the renewal of cluster and regional policy in a macro-economic context characterized by high instability and new growing consumer paradigms.

Keywords::

• cluster
• location externalities
• composite technology life cycle
• core/periphery
• disassortativity
• resilience

Keywords::

• D85
• L14
• O30
• R12

Notes

^1. Email: [email protected]

^2. “Silicon Valley Starts to Turn Its Face to the Sun” (New York Times, February 17, 2008). “A Green Energy Industry Takes Root in California” (New York Times, February 1, 2008).

^3. At this stage, an external shock can be associated with a decrease of demand or market potential. Further down in the demonstration, the occurrence of shocks may be considered as a consequence of the ability of some of the competing clusters to set up technological standards and lengthen the cycle of technologies.

^4. In their meta-study of cluster development, Brenner and Mühlig (2013) refer to ‘leading firms’ in the early stage of development. They find that such a strategy based on charismatic firms plays significantly a stronger role in continental Europe than in Asia or in the Anglo-Saxon world. They suggest that it might be the consequence of a longer history of industrial activity and the crucial role that firms played for a region in the past.

^5. “Silicon Valley Starts to Turn Its Face to the Sun” (New York Times, February 17, 2008).

^6. Shai Agassi founded Better Place in 2007, in Palo Alto, California, USA. Better Place implements a particular business model in which customers can purchase driving distance, as they purchase minutes for their mobile phone.

^7. “Reimagining the Automobile Industry by Selling the Electricity” (New York Times, October 29, 2007).

^8.SeattlePI.com, March 8, 2002.

^9.USA Today, May 26, 2011.

^10.The New York Times, February 17, 2008.