Clusters for life or life cycles of clusters: in search of the critical factors of clusters' resilience

This article investigates the driving forces behind the life cycles and resilience of technological clusters. It concentrates, in particular, on the combination of critical parameters which allows clusters to succeed in disconnecting their cycle from the cycle of the technologies they produce, in order to maintain stability and growth in unstable economic environments. Three propositions on location decision externalities, the life cycle of composite technologies and the structural properties of knowledge networks are developed and introduced in an inclusive study of cluster trajectories. Discussions show that resilient clusters are those that combine network and external audience effects in location decision-making and evolve towards a specific core/periphery and disassortative structure of knowledge interactions along the knowledge and market phases. Understanding these pathways could be at the heart of the renewal of cluster and regional policy in a macro-economic context characterized by high instability and new growing consumer paradigms.