Perspectives on Cluster Evolution: Critical Review and Future Research Issues

2015

The past two decades have witnessed an ever-growing scholarly interest in regional clusters. The focus of research has mainly been on why clusters exist and what characteristics “functioning” clusters hold. Although the interest in more dynamic views on clusters is not new, in recent years, however, more attention has been paid to providing better explanations of how clusters change and develop over time, giving rise to an increasing popularity of different variants of the cluster life cycle approach. This article offers a critical review of various cluster life cycle models. We discuss the key ideas and arguments put forward by their main protagonists and we identify several shortcomings –…