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This contributed volume studies and explains the effect of agglomeration on a firm's innovation and performance. It presents new cases as well as new topics within the agglomeration phenomenon, exploring also their role under the Great Recession. Beyond the analysis of regions or clusters, this volume focuses on firms within agglomerations and captures this phenomenon from different perspectives, contexts and diverse literatures. Specifically, it looks at the question under what circumstances exert generate benefits on firms' performance, and how those gains are generated and distributed, usually asymmetrically, across agglomerated firms. In this context, the book addresses topics such as networks, collocation, labor mobility, firm's strategies, innovation, competitiveness and collective actions across a diverse set of literatures, including economic geography, business economics, management, social networks, industrial districts, international business, sociology or industry dynamics.
List of contents
1. Cluster Advantage and Firm Performance: A Shift into the Future.- Part 1. Agglomerations and Performance.- 2. Effects of Being Located in a Cluster on Economic Actors.- 3. Pathways of innovation: The I-district effect revisited.- 4. Does innovation trigger internationalisation of clusters? - the case of Polish boiler-making cluster.- 5. Inward FDI and skilled labor force in Veneto's industrial districts.- Part 2. Agglomeration and Firm's Performance.- 6. Marshallian industrial district evolution: technological impacts and firms heterogeneity.- 7. Where should I locate my hotel? An in-depth analysis of the cluster effect on hotel's performance.- 8. The story of cluster as a cross-boundary concept: from local development to management studies.- 9. How local knowledge networks and firm internal characteristics evolve across time inside science parks.- 10. The role of leading firms in explaining evolutionary paths of growth: Italian and Turkish clusters on the move.- 11. New roles for supporting organizations in clusters: enhancing connectedness in knowledge networks.- Part 3. Agglomerations, Turnarounds and Recessions.- 12. Endogenous rerouting and longevity in Systemic organizations of production.- 13. Natural disasters and firm resilience in Italian Industrial Districts.- 14. Coping with economic crises: cluster associations and firm performance in the Basque Country.- 15. Italian Industrial Districts and the 2008 Recession.- 16. Industrial districts/clusters and smart specialisation policies.
About the author
Fiorenza Belussi obtained her PhD in 1993, from Spru, Science Policy Research Unit (University of Sussex, United Kingdom). Since 2010 Fiorenza Belussi is Full Professor. She has participated in several international projects financed by the EU (DGXII- ADAPT, TSER), UNIDO, CNR, the Italian Ministry of Scientific Research, 7° program 2007-8, Interreg IIIC, 7° program 2009-10: ICaTSEM- Institutional change and trajectories of socio-economic development modes, Smart-spec (2013-2016). Her areas of interest include: a) management of innovation and creativity, creative industries, theoretical models on innovation diffusion through gatekeepers; studies of open innovation, local systems of innovation; b) International business and the impact of globalisation on local economies. Dr. Belussi has published more than 190 articles and book chapters. Among others, she has published in: International Journal of Technology Management, Futures, European Planning Studies, Research Policy, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Urban Studies, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Industry & Innovation, Regional Studies, and numerous other Italian Journals.
Jose Luis Hervas-Oliver is Full Professor of Strategy and Innovation at the Universitat Politènica de València. His research interest lies at the intersection between strategy/innovation and economic geography. His research has been published in management and economic geography journals such as Research Policy, Technovation, Journal of Economic Geography, Papers in Regional Science, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, European Planning Studies, Journal of Business Research, Small Business Economics, Journal of Technology Transfer, Research-Technology Management, among many others, along with chapters in books published by Springer, Edward Elgar or Routledge, among others. Dr. Hervas-Oliver is at the present time director of the ECO2015:63645-R Open Innovation in Clusters, founded by the Spanish Ministry of Economics.
Summary
One of few existing volumes that highlights agglomeration and the gains of co-located firms
Explores the emerging topic of asymmetric gains within agglomeration
Analyses the effects of agglomeration on firm performance during the Great Recession
