The Resilience of Clusters in the Context of Increasing Globalization: The Basque Wind Energy Value Chain

Abstract

In this paper, we study how globalization impacts on the structure and governance patterns of value chains and on the resilience of local clusters. We study the value chains related to two Basque (Spain) companies in the wind energy industry, Iberdrola and Gamesa, and the local cluster to which they belong. We find that firms within the cluster have different types of relationships with lead companies depending on their competences and the complexity of their products. As a consequence, firms also present different potential for growth and/or resilience: some have the capacity to internationalize their operations and/or shift to the offshore wind market, others are vulnerable to competition from providers in the emerging countries. Against this context, we discuss how the cluster responds to these challenges and the role of policy.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support received for this project by the SPRI-Basque Government. They also thank Hubert Schmitz, Khalid Nadvi, Phil Cooke and the other participants for their insightful comments in the workshop on ‘Clusters in global value chains and production/innovation networks’ held in San Sebastian on October 20–21, 2011. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

In their terminology, relational pattern, as in Gereffi et al (2005), corresponds to network, defined as bringing together partners with complementary competences.

Functional upgrading refers to the capacity to add up new higher value-added phases (e.g. marketing or product development and design to assembly). Inter-sectoral upgrading centres on the capacity to move cluster production to new, related sectors taking advantage of the technological complementarities (e.g. from the pharmaceutical industry to biotech, from chemicals to nanomaterials or from hardware to software and ICT systems).

Chinese wind turbine manufacturers are beginning to look beyond their own borders to expand abroad in India and developing economies in Africa, and parts of eastern Europe (Financial Times, 2012).

The Group's offshore business is managed through Scottish Power Renewables. Available at http://www.iberdrola.es/webibd/corporativa/iberdrola?cambioIdioma=ESWEBCONLINRENOVABLES (accessed 28 June 2012).

Available at www.rechargenews.com (accessed 2 July 2012).

For more information see www.clusterenergia.com (accessed 4 July 2012).

Available at https://register.epo.org/ (accessed 11 October 2011).

Available at www.gamesacorp.com (accessed 4 July 2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roberta Rabellotti

Current address: Roberta Rabellotti, Department of Political and Social Science, Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy