Introduction: Embedded Clusters in the Global Economy

The growing literature on both clusters and regional innovation systems highlights the relevance of networks of interrelated firms as key factors in the ability to produce innovative new products or processes in a timely fashion for global markets. These, and related, bodies of literature recognize that in a global marketplace, local input factors and inter-firm dynamics are critical to a firm's ability to innovate and thereby gain competitive advantage. The key questions that arise from this literature concern the way in which local conditions influence or constrain the developmental path of individual clusters, the extent to which they are grounded in specific local agglomerations of key factors that contribute to their growth, the relative influence of local dynamics in stimulating the competitive capabilities of the cluster and the extent to which external institutional supports in the form of research infrastructure, government policy or more intangible associational supports underpin the vitality of the local cluster. The papers gathered in this special issue synthesize the results of a 5-year study of 26 industrial clusters conducted by members of the Innovation Systems Research Network in Canada.