The economics of regional clusters, where business formation, technological innovation, and the emergence of a highly-skilled labor force converge, has become a popular topic. This fascinating book applies a variety of tools and models to analyze, in depth, the formation and growth of high-tech clusters. It does this first by exploring the institutional forces that promote the failure or success of such agglomerations, and then by focusing on the dynamics of the labor force.

Richards; 7.

Social capital as a concept, is a comparatively recent addition to the regional economic and innovation literature. Facets of social capital are generally acknowledged to include trust, collaboration, cooperation, bridging and bonding social network ties, and reciprocity. Nevertheless, forms of social capital such as bonding and bridging social capital, are less frequently explored in the literature. Innovation and Social Capital in Organizational Ecosystems breaks down the concept of innovation into its main components, which represent a spectrum of innovation activity from technology-based innovation to hidden and social innovation, in order to support executives concerned with innovation and social capital in different work communities and environments. Highlighting a range of topics including regional development, social innovation, network capital, and more, this book is ideally designed for researchers, professionals, students, policymakers, and practitioners.

The Handbook of Entrepreneurship brings together the best researchers in the USA and Europe to review the most up-to-date thinking on the most crucial topics in entrepreneurship studies. It is the first book to combine the research activities of Europe and the United States and reflects cutting-edge research with a multicultural perspective. The 21 chapters in the Handbook have been written by 28 experts representing a entrepreneurial Who's Who.

'This volume is an important step in furthering the discussion about how cluster strategies work and the implications for theory and policy.' – Jennifer Clark, Review of Regional Studies The role of innovations and clusters has increasingly dominated local and regional development policies in recent decades. This authoritative and accessible Handbook considers important aspects of high-tech clusters, analyses insightful cluster case studies, and provides a number of recommendations for cluster policies. The chapters in this Handbook are written by international experts in the field and present evidence of the scope, effects, and potential of clusters as concentrations of innovative activities. The authors emphasize that cluster development is not the only option for local and regional development and argue that for cluster policies to be worthwhile, supporting policies in fields such as education, R&D, transportation, and communication infrastructure must accompany most cluster policies. Furthermore, several contributions stress that clusters often develop along a life cycle that may end with decline and even the disappearance of clusters. Consequently, this Handbook provides the basis for improving both research on innovation and clusters and the formulation and implementation of cluster policies. Furnishing the reader with rich, comprehensive discussion of innovations and clusters, this Handbook will be an essential source for researchers and academics in the field, as well as policymakers, planners and specialists, development experts and agencies, and consultants.

This book highlights the role of entrepreneurship, social capital and governance for regional economic development. In recent decades, many researchers have claimed that entrepreneurship is the most critical factor in sustaining regional economic growth. However, most entrepreneurship research is undertaken without considering the fundamental importance of the regional context. Other research has emphasized the role of social capital but there are substantial problems in empirically relating measures of social capital to regional economic development. The expert contributors to this work highlight the role of governance in regional growth, an area that has so far been relatively under-researched, underpinning their findings with new theoretical and empirical evidence. They conclude that the relationship between entrepreneurship, social capital and governance in factors affecting regional economic development are complex and interdependent, and that to influence these factors and the relationship between them, policymakers must have a long-term perspective and be both patient and persistent in their efforts. This enlightening book will be of great interest to academics, students and researchers across a range of fields including regional science, regional economics, economic geography, regional planning, public policy, entrepreneurship, political science and economic sociology. Policymakers involved in regional policymaking from national down to regional and local levels will also find the book to be an illuminating read.

Social Capital and Entrepreneurship concludes by examining the tension between the properties of social networks used in entrepreneurship researchers' models and the limited perspective on networks available to practicing entrepreneurs.