Boosting Innovation The Cluster Approach

This book shows how technology policy makers in OECD countries are making practical use of the concept of clusters and suggests how government policies to foster innovation might best be refocused.

Policies to stimulate innovation at national and local levels must both build on and contribute to the dynamics of innovative clusters. This book presents a series of papers written by policy makers and academic experts in the field, that demonstrate why and how this can be done.

Innovation is the motor of economic change. Over the last fifteen years, researches in innovation processes have emphasised the systemic features of innovation. Whilst innovation system analysis traditionally takes a static institutional approach, cluster analysis focuses on interaction and the dynamics of technology and innovation. First, the volume gives an overview of the different levels of analysis from which the innovation behaviour of firms has been observed in the past. The book then presents a distinct cluster approach as a useful and innovative tool to analyse the configuration and dynamics of networks of actors involved in innovative processes. This approach emphasises the possibilities of enhancing cluster benefits by introducing virtual links between cluster actors. Empirical evidence is provided for the automotive components and the telecommunication industries. By restricting the discussion to Germany and Italy, the authors are able to explore the role that national innovation systems play as a framework in which clusters operate.

This title was first published in 2002. Examining cluster development policy in Europe and outlining its distinctive features, this innovative text places it within the national context of regional policy-making. It also identifies the features supporting the successful development of industrial clusters and provides a clear overview of cluster theory and policy practice followed by seven key case studies on the history and operation of different cluster policies in Europe. While there has been a number of books on the theory of cluster development little research has been published on policy. By filling this gap, this book will be of interest to a policy-making audience as well as students and researchers of regional economic development throughout Europe.

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.

This study defines the aims and tools of a new innovation policy and identifies examples of good policy practice recently implemented in OECD countries.

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.

This report analyses the objectives, targeting, instruments and inter-governmental role sharing used by 26 regional cluster programmes in 14 OECD countries.