Social Capital, Knowledge, and Competitiveness: The Cases of the Basque Paper and Electronics/ICT Clusters

The importance of clusters and spatial networks for economic development has been largely acknowledged in economic and business literature (see, for example, Porter, 1998; Martin and Sunley, 2003; Malmberg and Maskell, 2002). Empirical evidence shows that companies in clusters experience stronger growth and faster innovation than those outside clusters, and that clusters attract more start-ups than regions without clusters (Audretsch and Feldman, 1996; Baptista and Swann, 1998; Baptista, 2000; Klepper, 2007; Swann et al., 1998). These characteristics cause clusters to be considered a prerequisite for regional prosperity (Porter, 2003; Bathelt, 2001). Many policy-makers have also recognized this phenomenon and turned to policies based on cooperative networks (Aranguren et al., 2006).