Knowledge Economies

As in previous bursts of economic growth, the contemporary emergence of "new economy" industries emerge and grow in specific geographic locations - "clusters". This book reviews cases where national governments have been able to implant clusters in places where they did not previously exist.
Today concerns about national competitiveness and economic development are closely linked to notions of the information society and knowledge-based economy. Some see the emergence of a "new economy", based on information, communication, media and biotechnologies. As in previous bursts of economic growth, these innovative industries emerge and grow in specific geographic locations, now called "clusters". The well-known case of Silicon Valley was merely the first of a large number of such clusters to have developed in the late 20th and early 21st century. Clusters are characterized by co-operative and competitive, trustful and rivalrous, exchange and favour-based business interactions. This book traces the theoretical explanation for clusters back to the work of classical economists and their more modern disciples who saw economic development as a process involving serious imbalances in the exploitation of resources. First natural resource endowments explained the formation of 19th and early 20th century industrial districts. Today geographical concentrations of scientific and creative knowledge are the key resource. However, these require a support system, ranging from major injecti