Building Photonic Clusters January 2000, Volume 5, Number 1 Building Photonic Clusters Currents With industry analysts touting photonics as the next trillion-dollar industry , competition in many parts of the world is intense as countries develop strategies to capture their portion of the burgeoning market. Borrowing from the success seen in other industries, most notably Silicon Valley, there is a rapidly growing trend towards the development of regional business clusters to create competitive advantages .
Clusters encompass an array of linked industries and other entities important to competition.
They include, for example, suppliers of specialized inputs such as components, machinery, and services, and providers of specialized infrastructure. Clusters also often extend downstream to channels and customers and laterally to manufacturers of complementary products and to companies in industries related by skills, technologies, or common inputs. Porter suggests that clusters affect competition in three broad ways. A cluster allows each member to benefit as if it had greater scale or as if it had joined with others formally - without requiring it to sacrifice its flexibility. A cluster acting as a large, established group rather than a single company will raise the profile of the regional industry.