The economic cluster corresponds to the French concept of Pôle of competence.

When the book of Michael To carry, the competitive advantage , is translated into French, its analysis makes already school in the management and the strategy of companies. It reactualizes by modifying it the concept of economic rent (profit of the organizations compared to the funded capital) of the economist David Ricardo (1817).

Definitions

For Michael Porter the development of the strategy of a company must rest on an competitive advantage already obtained or potential. It classifies these advantages in two main categories favors by the costs and favors by differentiation. It develops then its theory while being based on the types of actors concerned with a product in an industrial sector. Thus it defines the model out of diamond of the five forces of competition. The actors concerned are: prospective competitors, customers, suppliers, new entrants, offerers of substitute products. They are in presence and fight permanently in each sector, exerting power struggles which it is a question of identifying to know the key factors of success and to build a comprehensive strategy.

Applied to the phenomena of space agglomeration the model To carry allows to apprehend the geographical concentration like the resultant of a process of interactions between the actors defined in his model, by an increase in the productivity of the firms or industry. These processes stimulate the innovation and the productivity, by encouraging the transfer of information. That brings to define the clusters which, for this author, are:

“ Clusters are geographic concentrations off interconnected companies, specialized suppliers, service providers, firms in related industries, and associated institutions (e.g., universities, standard agencies, trade associations) in has particular field that compete goal also cooperate ”.

The principal idea to retain is that around the space agglomeration of companies, suppliers and institutions, are produced geographical externalities (benefit related to the localization) which benefit the unit from the entities in presence within a system from competition and co-operation. There is thus local improvement of the system of production which forms part of a system of global values. The borders of the cluster thus take shape compared to the companies which invest locally. The analysis of an economic environment (“business environment”) through the five forces of competition To carry, makes it possible to identify the advantages which a company can have to be located with such or such place. The entrance point is then the inputs (factors and conditions) which determine the system effectiveness locally. It acts for example for a company, of its physical capacity to reach information, or university presence of research units. These inputs get for the clusters an advantage and a capacity of innovation, insofar as they tend to specialize and improve their quality while drawing from the characteristics (cultural, historical, of know-how or knowledge) of the place. In the long term, the clusters obtain by this phenomenon a not very transferable form of specialization to other places.

From this point of view, the development process of the clusters is a dynamic and retroactive phenomenon. It is thus made up, following the example theory of the growing points of François Perroux, of three phases of development, whose first is the discovery, the second the golden age, and the last maturity. These three phases are the result of an evolution according to time and the number of titular companies within the cluster.

This concept became impossible to circumvent in the literature but its fuzzy definition is often announced like a problem for the projection of its conceptualization. Indeed, Michael Porter announces the fact that one does not have a standard ideal of cluster but rather a cluster by object of study, according to his maturity on the one hand and of dominant industrial on the other hand. It is thus a flexible concept of which the study must show a solid methodology to make research consistent. There does not remain about it less one concept founder of the revival of the Anglo-Saxon economic geography whereas the French economic geography, at the same period (1990 - 2000), had evil to seize problem of the phenomena of space agglomeration in the emergent industrial sectors.

References

See too

• geographical Economy
• the concept of local productive System
• Cluster (town planning)
• Pole of competence
• Michael To carry
• Five forces To carry