ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of entrepreneurship and public policy in the formation of technology-based industrial clusters. The emphasis is on the early high-growth stage rather than the mature or declining stages in the life cycles of clusters. The idea is to identify common patterns or regularities in the role played by human actors – entrepreneurs and policy-makers – in cluster formation. Having surveyed the burgeoning literature on how clusters emerge, I concentrate on eight cases in different areas of the world and different time periods that allow sufficient depth to discuss the role of individual actors as well as the role of public policy. I draw on previous literature, as well as the case studies in Braunerhjelm and Feldman (2007). The cases studied are the emergence of the automobile industry in Detroit in the early part of the twentieth century; the motion picture industry in Hollywood in the period 1915–30; Route 128 in Boston in the 1940s to 1980s; Silicon Valley in the 1950s and 1960s; the biotech industry in the US Capitol region in the 1970s and 1980s; the venture capital industry in Israel in the 1980s and 1990s; the ICT clusters in Ireland during the same time period; and the regional biotechnology clusters along the east coast of China, also in the 1980s and 1990s. In each of these cases, I focus on the historical background and on how pre-existing agglomerations were transformed into rapidly growing clusters.
