ABSTRACT
Lafayette/West Lafayette, Indiana, is emerging as a new materials and processes cluster, centered at the Morrill Land, Sea, Air, and Space Grant main campus of Purdue University. It feeds innovations and technologies into three medical-biological clusters in northeast, central, and southwest regions of Indiana. Cook Biotech forms a cornerstone of Purdue's Research Park. The persistence of Ball in Indiana reinforces skills clustering while the new business of aerospace research and development is a form of deep recycling, albeit outside the focused region of this study, adding value to aluminum by producing space-age metals. Nanshan promises low-cost commodity aluminum by maximizing production per unit of heat or electric energy. Warsaw, Indiana, about 40 miles west northwest of Fort Wayne, serves as the center of another specialized high-technology industry cluster. Fort Wayne Metals supplies specialty metals to the Warsaw cluster, where many of its customers are located. Fort Wayne Metals also conducts medical-device research that has begun to yield results.
