Growing Innovation Clusters for American Prosperity Summary of a Symposium (2011) / Chapter Skim
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PANEL I: WHY CLUSTERS MATTER: INNOVATION CLUSTERS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
PANEL I: WHY CLUSTERS MATTER: INNOVATION CLUSTERS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
Pages 47-56
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From page 47... ...
It's wonderful to now be giving it in the U.S." She began her discussion by giving "the academic viewpoint on cluster development," and signaled her agreement with previous speakers on the fundamental point that "all growth is local and grounded in place," taking the focus from nations to sub-national units." She attributed this shift to a local focus on understanding innovation as a "cognitive and contextual process," predicated on face-to-face interactions, serendipity and chance encounters and their outcomes. One kind of outcome, she said, is that people, when dealing with something new, naturally develop a shared common meaning and a language to describe it.
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From page 48... ...
That is, how do regions change from being inert -- with little innovation, little entrepreneurship, slow economic growth -- to being active places? She said that a central finding of scholars who study clusters is that they are not "economic development sausage machines," where the right ingredients added at one end produce the desired product at the other.
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From page 49... ...
"When you look around the U.S., everyone is trying to capture a biotech industry, even though a few places have already moved so far ahead." What, then, is a city or region to do? Feldman returned to her point that designing an economic development strategy "may be the ultimate local innovation." In Asia, the government is able to dictate from the top down that a cluster will be established in a certain location.
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From page 50... ...
While a private company seeks primarily to grow and to earn a profit, a government must consider many outcomes of cluster activity, including the quality of life in the community. "An economic development strategy that will work," she said, "has to be predicated on a deep understanding of the location." Ideas Do Not Stop at Borders Feldman then referred to the concept of "coherent geographical systems" as a framework for organizing economic activity.
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From page 51... ...
Dr. Feldman concluded by suggesting that knowledge and economic development, as reinforced by clusters, will be essential to the United States as other nations increase their own standards of living.
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From page 52... ...
An Industry Can Have Only a Handful of Clusters Despite long-time experience with clusters, he said, economic development is accompanied by "a lot of magical thinking." He concurred with earlier speakers who said that "every place wants to be Silicon Valley." Despite the fallacy of this wish, economic development agencies continue their efforts to do so, using any number of "magic bullets." In the 1980s, they trusted that a business incubator was the key to success. "Today clusters have that danger," he said.
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From page 53... ...
Successful cluster initiatives are almost always industry-led and inclusive. Despite the natural tension between competing and collaborating at the same time, dynamic cluster initiatives manage to bring everybody to the discussion, including supply chain firms, educational institutions, and intellectual property experts.
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From page 54... ...
. Other places, such as Oregon and South Carolina, have set out to stimulate economic development across a number of clusters, which requires a broader program.
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From page 55... ...
He said that the jointly authored paper mentioned at the beginning of his talk had tallied some 250 programs, budgeted at $77 billion that had been created to "try to staunch the bleeding, to move forward with some effectiveness in regional economy policy." Time for the Government to "Enter This Space" However, he said, the national economy continues to be "macrofocused" and to lack a competitiveness strategy. It has failed to recognize that "national competitiveness is a function of regional competitiveness," and that "regional competitiveness in turn is largely a function of cluster competitiveness." Hence, he concluded, we have had no federal policy on clusters.
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From page 56... ...
This it not a small challenge. It is going to take nothing less than a new federal culture."
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