Clusters in the Global Knowledge-based Economy: Knowledge Gatekeepers and Temporary Proximity

Clusters have been at the centre of local industrial development studies and strategies in recent years. Two complementary factors accentuate the importance for firms and territories of governing the interactions between industrial players: the globalization of the economy and technologies; and the emergence of a knowledgebased economy. Efficient structures can generally be envisaged as deriving benefits from the complementarity between local and global relations. In this context, how far do the interactions between industrial players still require geographical proximity? The interfaces between local and global relationships become a strategic feature that can be achieved through different use of space and time. ‘Knowledge gatekeeper’ and ‘temporary proximity’ thus appear as two key concepts for achieving a partnership between players and a better flexibility in the local–global trade-off. Clusters have been at the centre of local industrial development studies and strategies in recent years. They appear as a strong factor in innovation and competitiveness due to the intensity of interactions they allow between the agents in the industrial dynamics. Of course, this phenomenon related to geographically concentrated activities is not completely new, and has been addressed by many older studies. The model of flexible specialization developed by PIORE and SABEL (1984) at the beginning of the 1980s, in the line of the earlier work of Alfred Marshall, already shed light on the role of interacting small specialized firms as a response to the decline in the model of the big firm. Many empirical studies have also focused on the agglomeration of highly competitive firms in the late 20th century (for instance, BEST, 1990). Two complementary factors nevertheless accentuate the importance for firms and territories of governing the interactions between industrial agents: the globalization of the economy and technologies and the emergence of a knowledge-based economy. It is clear that the immense advances in transport and communication technologies call into question the local nature of synergies and the geographical proximity of the agents. Knowledge now occupies a central position at the heart of increasingly more industrial and innovation processes, added to which technologies of information and communication have powerfully developed, in terms of both performance and infrastructure. Knowledge spillovers may have a significant local impact, but they can also affect distant firms through nongeographical proximities. Proximity as a driving force of agents’ interaction and coordination (PECQUEUR and ZIMMERMANN, 2004) can be interpreted in different ways depending on the nature of what agents share or have in common. TORRE and RALLET (2005) make the distinction between a geographical proximity that can be measured in terms of distance (length or time) in the geographical space and an ‘organized proximity’ that results from the existence of common routines, rules or even representations or beliefs that permit coordination. Thinking about the role of proximity in the innovation process, BOSCHMA (2005) introduces the notion of ‘cognitive proximity’ that facilitates communication and means: ‘that people sharing the same Regional Studies, Vol. 42.6, pp. 767–776, July 2008