Entrepreneurial Growth in Industrial Districts illustrates that Industrial Districts (ID) have dramatically changed over the past three decades; the Marshallian notion of a cluster of small firms has been vastly transformed by the emergence of rapidly growing firms.
Entrepreneurship, Growth and Innovation provides comprehensive insight into the economics of entrepreneurship, claiming that this recently established discipline should establish a framework of analysis that integrates the understanding of the determinants and the effects of both entrepreneurship and innovation without neglecting the functioning of the inducement mechanisms. For this purpose, the book combines theoretical prescriptions and international empirical evidence. Contributions by some of the best known scholars in the field of the economics of entrepreneurship and innovation investigate whether the interrelationships between the forces that affect firm and industry dynamics and ultimately determine economic growth are subject to change across countries and over time. The analysis of different national cases puts forward that the relationship between entrepreneurship and growth via innovation is shaped by the context of country-specific institutions and industries, thereby providing hints for industrial and innovation policy.
Regional economic development has experienced considerable dynamism over recent years. Perhaps the most notable cases were the rise of China and India to emergent country status by the turn of the millennium.
During the 1980s the Marshallian concept of industrial district (ID) became widely popular due to the resurgence of interest in the reasons that make the agglomeration of specialised industries a territorial phenomenon worth being analysed. The analysis of clusters and IDs has often been limited, considering only the local dimension of the created business networks. The external links of these systems have been systematically under-evaluated. This book offers a deep insight into the evolution of these systems and the internal-external mechanism of knowledge circulation and learning. This means that the access to external knowledge (information or R&D cooperative research) or to productive networks (global supply chains) is studied in order to describe how external knowledge is absorbed and how local clusters or districts become global systems. It provides a unified approach; showing that existing capabilities expand when locally embedded knowledge is combined with accessible external knowledge. In this view, external knowledge linkages reduce the danger of cognitive ‘lock-in’ and ‘over-embeddedness’, which may become important obstacles to local learning and innovation when technological trajectories and global economic conditions change. A selection of international experts
'A Handbook of Industrial Districts is a very well-organized and structured collection of scientific works on the theory of industrial districts.' - Roberta Capello, Regional Studies In this comprehensive original reference work, the editors have brought together an unrivalled group of distinguished scholars and practitioners to comment on the historical and contemporary role of industrial districts.
The book contains a selection of papers on business clusters in its multiple perspectives. It has evolved from the research symposium organized by the The Society for Global Business and Economic Development (SGBED), an international group of academicians, at Dubai during January 2009. It begins with an introduction to the concept of clusters, and then examines their link to a host of strategic issues, such as their nexus to competitive advantage, their performance vis-à-vis their competitors who are not similarly agglomerated, and the challenges in measuring the performance of clusters. Regional economic clusters have serious policy implications. Governments, local as well as national, have used clusters as the unit for investment and infrastructure upgrading policies. It focuses on the normative aspects as well as practices and provides pointers on how public policies can help the development and growth of regional economic clusters. With numerous examples and cases from a host countries such as Dubai, Mexico, Spain and Karnataka (India), the book is a must read for all students of business strategy.
In recent years, policy makers have given much credence to the role of entrepreneurship in the transformation of regions. As a result, a new set of policy responses have emerged that focus on the support of new venture creation, small business growth and idea generation and commercialization. While there is a wealth of research about entrepreneurship in general, less attention has been given to the development of new tools and programs in support of entrepreneurial activities, and to the ways in which the emergence, the character and the types of entrepreneurship policies might differ between countries. In particular, the transatlantic perspective is of special interest because of the pioneering role of the United States in this area, and also due to the European Union's focus on economic competitiveness. The contributions included in this book explore the emergence of entrepreneurship policies from a transatlantic comparative perspective and address different aspects of entrepreneurship policies including local entrepreneurship policies and the relationship between knowledge-based industries and entrepreneurship policies.
A Brookings Institution Press and American Assembly publication Slow job growth, declining home values, a diminishing tax base, and concentrated poverty are but a few of the growing obstacles for well-established but struggling cities. Challenged by decades of globalization, technological change, and dramatic demographic shifts away from the urban core, these former industrial powerhouses, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest, have been eclipsed by burgeoning American cities with a viable niche in the new economy. In Retooling for Growth, experts present new frameworks, cutting-edge analysis, and innovative policy solutions for the nation's government, business, civic, and community leaders to sculpt a sustainable and supportable economy for older industrial areas. The unique focus on rehabilitating weak market cities outlines ideas for reshaping the role of public agencies, the workforce, business organizations, and technology. Implementation of these measures addresses challenges such as fostering entrepreneurship, reducing poverty and inequality, and maintaining and augmenting the number of skilled professionals who reside and work in a community, among others. This collection of essays offers practical, achievable strategies for revitalizing industrial areas and building upon the potential of existing but overlooked resources of economic, physical, and cultural significance. In this important volume, leading authorities provide a thought-provoking analysis of healthy economic development practices for both public and private sectors.
Cases in Technological Entrepreneurship offers an updated and comprehensive view of the main issues and concepts related to the entrepreneurial activities in technology intensive environments. Filled with outstanding examples and case studies, it is a great book for managers looking for best-practices, for academics and students researching in the field of technoentrepreneurship looking for fresh material and for public organizations willing to foster technoentrepreneurship in their regions or countries. François Thérin, Executive Education (Europe) and U21 Global The book examines from different perspectives a number of fundamental issues in the process of transforming technological innovations into profits. Key cases and field insights from distinguished contributors show the role and the practices of government bodies, universities, private investors and companies within the transformation of new ideas into value, in start-ups as well as in incumbents. The book takes a systemic view of technological entrepreneurship, positioning the topic at the interface between entrepreneurial and strategic perspectives within the emergent strategic entrepreneurship field. The multidisciplinary topics and approaches analyzed within the book will be appreciated by international practitioners dealing with fostering and practising technological entrepreneurship for or inside public and private organizations, particularly in Europe and in Emerging Economies. The experiences and field analysis represent good cases and findings for scholars delivering courses in technology and innovation management, economics of innovation, strategic management of technology and innovation.
The multidisciplinary, quantitative approach adopted by the author, enables her to "de-structure" the "canonical" idea of the ID and evaluate the normative value. Supported by multivariate and econometric analyses, she identifies four general types of ID each with different development paths, performances, inter-organizational relations, and regulatory rules and institutions. The results demonstrate that IDs on average achieve better static or dynamic economic performance than non-ID areas. The analysis also highlights critical points of rupture in the socio-economic equilibrium of IDs which may impair their future competitiveness and social sustainability. The author offers a critical appraisal of the organizational literature on IDs, claiming for caution in their depiction as "cooperative systems" and goes on to present the first steps towards a "microfoundation" of a theory on IDs.