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A large body of literature on industry clusters has been created during recent years by cluster practitioners and academic researchers alike. Over the past few years the cluster meta-study has begun to systematically aggregate this information in order to learn more from it as a whole. Based on data on more than
800 clusters in close to 50 nations all over the world, it analyzes the locational, economic and competitive characteristics of industry clusters, the reasons behind their competitiveness or uncompetitiveness, and their patterns of evolution over time as well as the reasons behind these patterns.
Compiling as many studies and reports on clusters was the first step in this project. While collecting cluster literature and adding to our cluster bibliography remains an ongoing part of this study, we think we have already assembled a substantial and representative portion of the relevant literature. We strove to collect as broad a range of cluster literature as possible, with the extremes ranging from detailed one-hundred-page studies of single clusters to cursory mentions of a cluster in newspaper articles.
Read a detailed list of the clusters in our database, together with a bibliography, and information on their location and related cluster initiatives.
To facilitate data entry and analysis in a standardized form we created a detailed cluster template. It consists of 120 variables which allow us to collect information ranging from basic descriptive statistics such as a cluster's name, location, or employment to more difficult to acquire statistics such as its competitiveness as measured by its world export share, growth, or ability to innovate, to complex qualitative statistics concerning the reasons behind its competitiveness, its initial rise or its decline.
The accompanying files show the template for three representative clusters: The watch cluster in Hong Kong, the tufted carpets cluster in south-west Flanders in Belgium, and the oil and gas cluster in Houston. They may demonstrate the template better than any description.
Besides its initial purpose as a data-collection
and -analysis tool for our cluster meta-study, we have found the cluster
template to be a useful instrument for profiling clusters and assessing their
competitiveness in a standardized way. It also facilitates a quick and uniform
display of information about individual clusters. Visit the
Cluster Profiles website to
download the template and view the entire set of collected profiles.
Read a presentation on "The Demography of Clusters".
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