ABSTRACT
This chapter sets itself three main tasks. First, it proposes a brief anatomy of the singular concept of specialisation and its policy correlate agglomeration, especially in its ubiquitous policy formulation as ‘clusters’ and cluster policies. In this, the idea of specialisation will be interrogated and its offshoots ‘clusters’ and clustering reviewed. Both are shown to be extremely vulnerable to context, as during economic upswings entrepreneurship is active, investors are willing to take risks and more customers are interested in buying, while in the downswing, this all grinds to a halt. Since approximately 2000, most high-tech investment (possibly excluding the ‘apps’ firms listed in Table 9.1) has been fairly stagnant. This is clear from the experience of biotechnology, for example, which has been starved of venture capital since the technology slump in 2000, with the consequence that start-ups have been deprived of risk capital. The second task of this chapter is, in this context, to anatomise the rise of the notion of ‘smart specialisation’ as a regional policy tool advocated particularly by the European Commission. This seems to have been adopted uncritically because it was perceived as consistent with an elsewhere discredited neo-liberal policy regime, in which ‘clusters’ had also been a favourite panacea for the EU. Finally, the chapter will build on this critique and anatomisation by showing the conceptual superiority of ‘relatedness’ based on the EEG concept of ‘related variety’ and especially the injunction both to ‘value variety’ as well as to seek ‘value variety’ in regional innovation policy, recognising also the value of ‘proximity’. Instead of ‘smart specialisation’, a ‘smart stimulation’ of regional innovation through facilitating cross-cluster and inter-industry knowledge flow to build robust regional innovation platforms is advocated. This has the further advantage of describing actual practice by accomplished European regional innovation agencies, as we have seen. Valuation of internet apps firms (2011) https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table">
Company
Indication
Value
Social networking
$60 billion
Groupon
Discount site
$15 billion
Social networking
$10 billion
Zynga
Social gaming
$9 billion
Linked-in
Business networking
$3 billion
Bebo
Social networking
$850 million (AOL price)
Huffington Post
News site
$350 million (AOL price)
Foursquare
Location sharing site
$250 million
Go Viral
Video network
$100 million (AOL price)
Source: Centre for Advanced Studies, Cardiff University