Abstract-This article focuses on innovative clusters and the role they play in the process of business engagement into foreign markets. This concept falls into the network approach of firm's internationalization, according to which an enterprise may internationalize when it develops a set of exchange relationships. One of the specific forms of network is cluster, with geographical and sectoral concentration as the key characteristic distinguishing it from other kinds of network structures. The aim of the article is to examine the role of clusters for innovation activity and for facilitating the process of internationalization of firms. The study shows that the latter may happen twofold: through clusters influence on affiliated company's internationalization behavior from the one side and by increasing location attractiveness of the regions for foreign direct investments from the second side. I. INTRODUCTIONInternationalization of firms has become a key concept in modern world economy, with many organizations embracing the opportunity to go international. The global market is gaining popularity and importance as a market and a base for internationally active companies and those which want to internationalize. In contemporary world economy, successful businesses must take advantage of opportunities created by many factors that drive globalization processes, like: dynamic technological and communication developments, decreasing barriers to international trade and investment or regional integration. It results in vibrant increase of firm's international engagements, like: exports and imports, foreign direct investments and networking of suppliers, consumers, technology developers and researchers. The globalization of business can be easily recognized in the spread of many brands and services throughout the world.One of the most important concept explaining the process of companies engagement into foreign markets is network approach. J. Johanson and L. Mattsson [1] consider business networks as the relationships a firm has with its customers, distributors, suppliers, competitors and government, which are the actors in a network. According to them, as the company internationalises, the number and strength of the relationships between different elements of the business network increases. Uppsala Model [2], which is experiential knowledge. Through network internationalization, a company can gain access to other firms' experiential knowledge without necessarily going through the same experiences. An enterprise learns about the capabilities, needs and strategies of its partner, as well as about business conditions and the networks. In this case, a typical internationalization process has changed from gradual, sequence expansion to expansion in leaps by joining the nets [2].One of the most popular type of network is cluster, which was defined by M.E. Porter as "geographic concentration of interconnected companies, suppliers, service providers, firms in related industries, and associated institutions (e.g., universities, st...
Clusters are recognized as important drivers of competitiveness and economic development. There are various models of clusters development all over the world, some of which may be initiated bottom-up by private firms, as in most European countries, or top-down by public administrations. In the case of Asian clusters, many are driven by foreign direct investments (FDI), with the most notable example being China. The objective of this study is to examine the Super Cluster strategy introduced in Thailand in 2015, especially in terms of the rationale and mechanism for selecting assisted clusters as well as the instruments used to support them. The goal is to contribute to a more in-depth formulation of the Asian model of clusters and cluster policy. The conducted analysis shows that Thai strategy deviates from traditional bottom-up approaches to cluster policy, veering towards the top-down approach in which government designates targeted regions and industries for the development of clusters. Another finding is that the Super Cluster strategy shares more common characteristics with Special Economic Zones (SEZ) than it does with the traditional approach to cluster policy in terms of its main objective of attracting foreign direct investments (FDI), securing support mechanisms as well as in the selection of target areas and the type of instruments to be implemented. The experience of Thailand is discussed along with that of other Asian countries, most notably China, in order to identify and verify the characteristics of the Asian model of clusters and cluster policy.
The article focuses on the problem of innovation gap in the world economy, as there are in general countries with developed national innovation systems, playing the role of technology leaders, and those with developing innovation systems, acting as innovation followers. Western European economies belong usually to the first group whereas China is traditionally classified in the second group; however, the analysis conducted in this study reveals a continuous catch-up process of this country towards the European Union in terms of the level of innovativeness of the economy. The purpose of this paper is to measure the dynamics of innovation gap between China and the EU average, and to identify the determinants of its evolution. Although for most of the analyzed indicators related to innovation, China’s performance is much below the EU average, the growth rates for Chinese economy in 2008–2018 have been higher than these of the EU, indicating convergence process. The key to development success in China lies in closing the technological gap by importing existing technology, and strengthening internal capabilities to utilize and improve on those technologies. Different reasons for China’s economy improvement in terms of innovativeness are analyzed, including external factors (e.g., foreign direct investments, which are concentrated mostly in eastern provinces, and associated technology transfer) and internal aspects (like science, technology and innovation policy, investment in research and development, and emergence of innovative regional clusters). The conclusion is that dynamic processes of increasing innovative potential of China provide with a solid fundamental for further convergence and diminishing innovation gap between this country and the European Union.
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