Clusters and competitiveness - PRO INNO Europe

The concept of cluster is one of the possible modern descriptions of a long-observed
phenomenon (for at least 125 years): the geographical concentration of economic activities,
widely believed to be an important factor in economic and regional development,
innovation and competitiveness.
It is generally accepted that there are different kinds of economic activities, which tend
to concentrate in certain locations. These concentrations have been given various names:
industrial districts, growth poles, clusters, local production systems, milieux innovateurs,
innovation systems, etc. In any case, it also seems to be generally accepted that the origins
of explanations for these concentrations may be found in Alfred Marshall’s studies of
industrial districts in England at the end of the 19 th century. More recently, at the end of the
1970s and at the beginning of the 1980s, the studies of Giacomo Becattini and his disciples
concerning industrial districts in the Terza Italia (Becattini, 1986) served to revive an interest
in Marshall’s work. Finally, in the 1990s, the studies on clusters by Michael Porter and his
disciples (Porter, 1990; Porter, 1998) revived interest in the concentration of economic
activities in certain locations from another perspective. Marshall, Becattini and Porter are
therefore the principal points of reference in the field of clusters. But there are others who
deserve a mention.
Nobody disputes that Alfred Marshall was the first to talk about and analyse industrial
districts in depth, in nineteenth century England. He identified three fundamental reasons
why the concentration of a group of companies from a given sector in a given location
(external economies or productive benefits that cannot be taken advantage of by the
individual firms that create them or contribute to their creation) should be more productive
than if they were separate and dispersed throughout the territory. Firstly, the companies
attracted by this concentration develop and benefit from a labour market having a pool of
workers with common skills and abilities; at the same time, the presence of many possible
employers needing workers with these specialised skills and abilities minimises the
economic risks for individual workers. Secondly, this concentration of similar enterprises
creates a good market for suppliers and offers the necessary scale or threshold for them
to increase and focus their expertise, which in turn represents a productive advantage for
their customers. Thirdly, ideas and innovations flow easily from one company to another in
an industrial district, as if the knowledge were “in the air” (knowledge spillovers).
For many years after Marshall, economists and other social scientists, with some exceptions
(Lösch, Von Thünen, Walter Isard, Jane Jacobs), dedicated little attention to territories.
30 CLUSTERS AND COMPETITIVENESS: THE CASE OF CATALONIA (1993-2010)