Learning from Clusters

Jan Lambooy retired in October 2002. When Jan was asked how he wanted to celebrate this occasion, he was adamant that no great festivities should take place. Characteristically, Jan wanted just a scientific conference so he "could learn something from it" and, as he insisted, no great festivities. So that is what we did and a conference was organised in Amsterdam on 25 October 2002, hosted by the Faculty of Economics and Econometrics of the University of Amsterdam. Friends of Jan's from academia in the Netherlands and abroad participated and thus paid homage to Jan, both as a scientist and as a person. We are now very proud to present this festschrift, firstly as the palpable result of this conference and secondly as a token of sincere respect and great affection for Jan. Edited volumes run the danger of being a hotchpotch of contributions on a wide variety of topics. Here, we have explicitly focused on a central theme in contemporary economic geography and regional science, namely therelationship between learning, innovation and clustering. Internationally renowned scientists made both theoretical and empirical contributions to this volume. We think this book constitutes a broad palette of contemporary thinking and research on the relationship between spatial concentration and innovation and hope it will play a significant role in future debates on this issue.

The 'Cluster' Model.- A Systematic Perspective on Local Development.- Cluster Dynamics.- Embedded Local Growth: A Theory Taken too Far?.- Beyond the Learning Region: The Dialectics of Innovation and Culture in Territorial Development.- Economic Development, Institutions and Trust.- Social Capital and Regional Development: An Empirical Analysis of the Third Italy.- Regional Innovation Systems, Varieties of Capitalism and Non-Local Relations: Challenges from the Globalising Economy.- Delirious Rotterdam: The Formation of an Innovative Cluster of Architectural Firms.- Competitiveness in Regional Clusters. The Case of Océ's 'Knowledge Industry Clustering' Project.- Clustering, Learning and Regional Development.- The Impacts of ICT and Externalities on Urban Development.- Urban Milieux: From Theory to Empirical Findings.- The Spatial Clustering of Knowledge-Intensive Services: Computing Services in the Netherlands.- Dynamic Information Externalities and Employment Growth in the Netherlands.- New Regional Economics: About Virtual Agglomeration Effects.- 'Old' and 'New' Economy and Services.- Economic Capabilities and Strategic Clusters: New Perspectives for National and Regional Economic Policy.- Concluding Remarks.- Further Learning from Clusters.