Innovation in Clusters. Estelle Vallier

Clustering: an old idea at the heart of current innovation policies

      High-tech clusters have been the subject of a wealth of research, principally in economics and management sciences, as well as in geography and sociology. Much of the literature can be traced back to the neoclassical economist Alfred Marshall and his concept of the industrial district, considered to be the ancestor of the cluster. As early as 1890, he defined it as coordination by the market and the reciprocity of a social division of labor between small specialized firms within a large productive process (Benko et al. 1996, p. 120). His approach was revisited in the 1970s by Italian⁷ sociologists and economists as a framework for analyzing their research on the Third Italy⁸, which specialized in traditional (clothing, footwear, leather, furniture, etc.) or more modern (small-scale mechanics, electrical engineering, etc.) activities (Daumas 2007). Based on Marshall’s work and his analysis of the province of Prato in Tuscany, Beccatini defines the Italian district form as follows:

A socio-territorial entity characterized by the active association, in a circumscribed and historically determined territorial area, of a community of people and a population of industrial enterprises. In the district, unlike what happens in other environments, such as the manufacturing city, community and business tend to, as it were, interpenetrate (Becattini 1989, p. 15).

      This idea of interpenetration between economic structures and individuals is taken up again in policies of technopolization and then clusterization. While the work on districts was aimed at analyzing existing environments, technopoles are the first political attempts to develop niches of specialization, in order to foster social and economic environments conducive to exchanges. Moreover, it is no longer just a matter of prioritizing inter-firm relationships in the Italian districts, but of reproducing the American science–industry relationship models. The most analyzed, of these, during the 1990s, were Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area (Saxenian 1996; Ferrary and Pesqueux 2004) and Route 128 in Boston. In these studies, the emphasis is on the concentration of companies in the same sector, as well as on the geographical proximity of research laboratories and educational institutions, so that informal relationships emerge that promote innovation, collaboration and the creation of businesses. In 1990, in his book Competitive Advantage of Nations, Michael Porter placed the local concept of the cluster at the center of his theory of competitiveness within the context of a globalized economy (Porter 1990). His definition is internationally understood by public decision-makers in industrialized countries:

      Clusters are geographic concentrations of interconnected companies, specialized suppliers, service providers, firms in related industries, and associated institutions (for example, universities, standards agencies, and trade associations) in particular fields that compete, but also cooperate (Porter 1998b, p. 4).

Porter’s conceptualization is seen in some geographic literature as a belated rediscovery of well-established evidence (Torre 2006, p. 17), including analyses of districts or technopoles. Nevertheless, this updated definition has been taken into account by public policy to the point of becoming a normative concept. It satisfies the ambition of reindustrialization, based on scientific innovation and a flexible network of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) adapted to the global economic system (Benko and Lipietz 1992), notably in Germany (skills clusters), Japan (knowledge clusters) (Forest and Hamdouch 2009) or even in the United Kingdom, where it inspires New Labour in its objective of renewing industrial policies (Zepf 2011, p. 187). In France, the cluster concept also emerged at the end of the 1990s under a socialist government⁹. Some aspects of the concept are alluded to through, as seen above, the creation of public incubators in the Allègre Act of 1999. In 2004, the concept was firmly established at the heart of the competitiveness cluster system. A characteristic of remote government, the state intervenes by calling for projects, designed to grant subsidies to selected candidates representing consortiums of companies, laboratories, organizations, associations, etc., from the same sector of activity. The call for projects is both a way to empower local actors, while also reducing their autonomy, insofar as the competing territories must rigorously respect the specifications established by the state if they wish to be selected (Epstein 2006, p. 108). In 2004, of the 105 applications submitted, the state selected 66 (there were 67 in March 2018)¹⁰. Applicants are well aware of the U.S. references linked to the competitiveness cluster system, and this is how the Valley projects appear: Aerospace Valley, Alsace Biovalley and even Cosmetic Valley.

Once they have been put in competition with each other in a general call for projects, the territories develop strategies to find the “right ingredients”¹¹ that promote innovation at the cluster level. The three essential dimensions of the typical ideal cluster are industry, science and education. They are embodied by companies, usually a network of SMEs and very small enterprises (VSEs), but the presence of large groups is often desirable for the cluster’s reputation and attractiveness, by both private and public research laboratories, and by renowned higher education institutions¹². Among the definitions of clusters found in the literature, and without claiming to be exhaustive, the definition given by Lamy and Le Roux in 2017 appears to be one of the most complete:

      It is therefore a question of a favorable environment that is not limited to elementary communication infrastructures but which benefits from the immediate proximity of specialized actors and expertise. These benefits are expected in the form of a ripple effect (called a “networkˮ effect by economists) by mutual reinforcement of several factors: productivity gains (through proximity, mutualization and/or reduction of intermediaries); the pooling of skills (under the auspices of the availability of human resources, but also of the maintenance of a permanent motivation based on challenge and elitism); an intensification of the circulation of information (which is important for prospecting and coordinating markets, but also for sharing tacit knowledge), etc. The aim is to obtain chain reactions of innovations, each one reverberating in this environment and acting as a sounding board to encourage others. The attractiveness of the cluster and its self-amplifying character must reach a critical mass providing a sustainable global competitive advantage (increasing visibility and therefore attractiveness, etc.) (Lamy and Le Roux 2017, p. 91).

      Here, we see the concept of an environment that is “favorable” to innovation, where geographical proximity is a key factor in the interpenetration of the various neighboring structures. This intricacy enables the sharing of equipment and the circulation of individuals between structures. Underpinned by implicit knowledge sharing, it leads to innovations, which are formal and wealth-producing and which reinforce the attractiveness of the cluster.

      I.1.3. Focusing on biotechnologies: catching up with the world through clustering

This book is particularly concerned with the contextualization and clustering of the life sciences. A major turning point for the life sciences occurred in the 1980s in the United States with the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, which allowed universities to patent publicly funded research (Gaudilliere and Joly 2006). The patenting of life forms has thus played an important role in bringing together the life sciences and their technological application, commonly known as biotechnology. This is understood as “a set of procedures implementing biological knowledge for a transformation of the living body: gene therapy, cloning, genetic modification of organisms, etc.” (Keck 2003, p. 182). It is identified as a field with a high technological potential, capable of “irrigating large areas of the economy” (Branciard 2004, p. 10), its aim being to make living organisms a factor of production like any other. Since 1983, the Ministry of Research has notably been one of the institutions involved in promoting biotechnology through organizations such as the National Scientific Research Centre (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS), the Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique, CEA), the National Agronomic Research Institute (Institut national de la recherche agronomique, INRA), the National Health and Medical Research Institute (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, INSERM), universities, foundations, etc. In addition to the creation of a national committee on these issues (the “biotechnology boom” program)¹³, the state committed itself to promoting biotechnology on October 17, 1990. Hubert Curien, Minister of Research at the time, launched the National Human Genome Program