ABSTRACT
The important, firm-level factor of cluster evolution is internationalization and relocation
of business activity undertaken by the lead companies in the established CDCs (Biggiero,
2006; Zucchella, 2006).This factor should be treated as internal to the cluster, relative to
the industry-level driver of modularization discussed in Section 3. The logic of relocation
processes from developed countries cannot be fully explained by modularization, as not all
industries undergo modularization or are at a life cycle stage that enables adopting it.
Moreover, beside general, industry-level technological and cost factors of relocation,
there are also locational choices of an institutional and socio-cultural nature, which can
be traced in the micro-perspective of an individual company and its network. Specifically,
at this level of analysis we can observe how different types of network governance emerge
to stimulate knowledge exploration and exploitation activities and thus the cluster devel-
opment prospects.
