0.5 Results  (Page 6/20)

Localisation, regional innovation systems, industrial districts, learning regions, local production systems and agglomeration economies are other labels given to the trend of geographically co-located firms in a value chain collaborating in some way in order to gain efficiency (Rabellotti and Schmitz 1999). The observation of regional cluster economies is not new with most writers referring back to Marshall’s work Principles of Economics , originally published in1890 (Marshall 1986, Keeble and Wilkinson 1999). A rise in the number of studies of industrial districts and small-firm led economic growth in the 1980s combined with the increase in interest in ‘networks’ and social aspects of inter-organisational interaction (Granovetter 1985, Burt 1987, and Gulati, 1999) is the result of renewed activity on the part of scholars in such disciplines as economics, planning, sociology, strategic management, organisational behaviour and business history (Harrison 1991). The seeming paradox of the rise in “importance of local proximity and geographic clusters precisely when globalization seems to dominate the economic activity” has been attributed to the fact that more innovative activity is associated with high-tech SME clusters than with “footloose multinational corporations” (Audretsch 1998).

Definitions of clusters range from those that defer mainly to the geographic collectivity ( “geographic concentrations of interconnected companies and institutions in a particular field” (Porter, 1998)) to those that emphasise the knowledge sharing aspects of such groupings: “Firms and organisations involved in clusters are able to achieve synergies and leverage economic advantage from shared access to information and knowledge networks, supplier and distribution chains, markets and marketing intelligence, competencies, and resources in a specific locality” , (Davenport 2005). Yet these respondents as previously identified as SMEs are not interested in certain aspect of access to specific equipment or sector specific material such as access to Biologic material for Biotech companies or “certified” procedures for regulatory approval. Yet they all identified a magnitude of importance of over 60% for access to testing and validation facilities for their products.

[link] presents the importance of facilities and support by Sector. This addresses a range of the sub-hypotheses presented key observations of the response are as follows:

• Broad Alignment with focus on “Soft” Support : The importance of individual facilities and support mechanisms was broadly aligned across all sectors, with greater importance upon “Softer” support such as People and Finance, than for specialist facilities. These softer support mechanisms had ~80% of respondents citing them as important, compared to ~10-20% for many specialist facilities.
• Facility Alignment with Sector : It is clear that facilities of a Bio Specific nature are clearly of moiré importance to companies in the Bio-Tech Sector. More generic manufacturing facilities as well as R&D equipment is of greater importance across the wider sectors. Bio-specific facilities are of an importance to the Bio-Tech sector broadly in line with more generic facilities for other sectors.
• Funding Business not Running it : Across all sectors there is significantly greater importance upon the availability of regional public and venture funding than upon in-house business centres. However, the sector most interested in all of the above is Bio-Tech. Access to funding is roughly twice as important amongst respondents as in-house business support for all the sectors.
• People Power : By far the most important support mechanisms for all sectors are the access to international networks and availability of collaboration opportunities. Respondents citing such support as ‘important’ are over five times as numerous as for some specialist facilities.