On the emergence and evolution of clusters

In recent years the literature on clusters has paid increasing attention to dynamics and two prominent approaches have emerged: the cluster life cycles (CLC) and regional path dependence (RPD). Both approaches adopt an historical perspective to study the socio-economic landscape. In this chapter, we build on an analytical cross-fertilization framework between the CLC and RPD approaches. Our main argument is that cluster dynamics is based on the interplay between external and internal factors ¹ and that entrepreneurs play a key role in articulating the pre-existent local capabilities and institutions. In doing so, we are able to address some unresolved issues in the literature, namely the role of human agency in the emergence and evolution of industrial clusters (Trippl et al., 2015; Martin, 2011; Garud and Karnøe, 2001), the role of external factors in shaping the evolution of clusters (Martin and Sunley, 2011; Santner and Fornahl, 2014), how transition between different stages of cluster development occurs and which factors are more prominent (Brenner and Schlump, 2011).