Many have concluded, and I quote, that ‘Clusters are the key organizational unit for understanding and improving the performance of regional economies. The foundation of a regional economy is a group of clusters, not a collection of unrelated firms.’ Yet these well-established messages seem to me to disguise the fact that economic clustering is an activity aimed at stimulating the mind, its really about thinking logically, practically and or creatively about the economic development of industries; not just about counting how many companies or how much R&D capability there is a region. My term as European Cluster Manager of the Year (2014-16) comes to an end in November 2016. During this period I have had the pleasure of interacting and visiting many locations around the world. Places that suggest to me that they have an active cluster in operation. However on inspection, I have more often than not found a collection of manufacturing plants, companies or researchers who rarely work together on any topic at all. These are locations where industry for historic reasons or due to financial incentives happened to have assembled. These are not clusters they are industrial parks or industrial regions. They do not necessarily represent economic cluster activity.
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