A Solid Overview of Economic Clusters in Working Paper

The Brookings Institution put together a pretty solid paper on economic clusters that was informative and gave a broad overview Brookings Institution Paper. You will find sections broken out and easy to follow and understand. Its an older resource but still a good piece of work. It helps sort of frame what clusters look like and how they impact the environment.

Particularly I like the history of clusters and I will read the paper again and see what great historical resources they have. For now, I'm just putting it in my references for the book I'm working on. The history is important because it traces a thought pattern and what might be included or missed.

I have gathered something like 350 pages of semi organized research collected over 14 or more years. I'm trying to get it into something like 100 pages of easy to read and easy to follow so I'm going to streamline for the average readers. Palatable.

Academic books are only read by a few people so having something more practical might make sense. For example, explaining my theory on transactional clusters and what that might do for a company or government. My theory appears to be slightly different but came from a difference source of understanding so there will be differences (i.e. San Diego fishing.)

We also have needs to improve innovation in this country if we want to continue to compete but we don't really find full support innovation and research nationally. Funding, restrictive educational pedigrees, policies, corporate finance, etc. all are part of the problem that lead to less university-industry transference. 

Much of the ground breaking discoveries in history came from people who thought differently and could use science accordingly so we should broaden access to innovative development. How to do that is the bigger question beyond why innovation is important to national development. 

Sorry sidetracked.....

The other area of the Brookings working paper you might find interesting is the discussion on the study of clusters being both art and science. Science is additive so it takes decades and one shift in discovery can lead to whole new paths of science. So there isn't just one definitive explanation of how clusters are formed or how to form them as different researchers will see slightly different things. 

Stay tuned....