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What Was New About the Cluster Theory? What Could It Answer and What Could It Not Answer?

University of California, Irvine

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: yasuyuki.motoyama{at}uci.edu.

	Abstract

Michael Porter’s cluster theory became popular at both the academic and policy levels as well as received a series of critiques. This article provides a synthetic view of those critiques. In addition, it reveals two new fundamental limitations of the theory. First, the descriptive and static nature of the theory limits the ability to replicate a successful cluster in practice. In other words, the current theory is more focused on describing how a cluster is organized today rather than how a cluster emerged. Incorporating historical process can strengthen the practical application. Second, the interconnectedness of a cluster is hard to measure empirically, and moreover, the theory does not explain how exactly the public sector can strengthen this aspect. A dialogue with networking theories can potentially improve the application.

First published on September 9, 2008, doi:10.1177/0891242408324373

Economic Development Quarterly 2008;22:353.

A more recent version of this article appeared on November 1, 2008


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