The Competitive Foundations of Localized Learning and Innovation: The Case of Women's Garment Production in New York City*

Abstract

This article considers the relevance of the "local" for firm learning in New York City's Garment District. By documenting the design innovation process in the district's women's wear industry and the ways in which designers draw on the district's specialized services and institutions to assist in the process, the article examines how a localized agglomeration or "cluster" facilitates the development of shared conventions and practices. It also shows how the district confers benefits on firms in indirect ways. Since apparel manufacturers operate in a U.S. regulatory framework that inhibits cooperation, the Garment District's support institutions serve as production intermediaries, providing firms with a means to monitor and observe rival firms' performances and solutions. As such, the case of the Garment District poses interesting challenges to the prevailing conceptions of the "local" as a site for cooperation and suggests the need to rethink the relevance of competition for learning and innovation.

Patterns of Knowledge: The Geography of Advanced Services and the Case of Art and Culture

“…Faulkner and Anderson (1987) argue that the dense social networks within Hollywood enable the various participants (producers, directors, actors) to use recurrent social ties to recombine to produce new projects and decrease uncertainty and risk. Rantisi (2004) points out a similar confluence of activities, institutions, and skills in her discussion of New York's fashion industry, where she argues that it was the convergence of top fashion magazines, fashion institutions of education, and with designers and critics that allowed for the "ascendance of New York fashion." Caves (2000) makes this point more generally in his discussion of the motley crew quality of creative industries, referring to the need for a vast array of skills and resources necessary for production.…”

“…Recently, there has also been a flurry of interest in the where and why of artistic and cultural production (Christopherson and Storper 1986;Molotch 1996Molotch , 2002Caves 2000;Scott 2000Scott , 2005Florida 2002aFlorida , 2002bRantisi 2002aRantisi , 2002bRantisi , 2004Markusen and King 2003;Coe and Johns 2004;Power and Scott 2004;Markusen and Schrock 2006;Currid 2007). Some have pointed to their tendency to locate in urban areas due to conducive and open social and economic environments (Molotch 1996;Florida 2000Florida , 2002bMarkusen and King 2003;Currid 2007).…”

“…Others have looked at art and culture production as a component of a consumption agglomeration that attracts high-skill human capital (Glaeser 2000;Clark 2004). Still others have looked at the larger industrial production system that enables the creation of art and culture for the global marketplace and the ability for culture to brand place and vice versa (see particularly Molotch 1996Molotch , 2002Scott 2000;Rantisi 2002aRantisi , 2002bRantisi , 2004and Power and Scott The Geography of Advanced Services and the Case of Art and Culture 419 2004). Like Markusen and King (2003) and Markusen and Schrock (2006), we examine industries that primarily produce art (i.e., music, art media, dance), design, and cultural goods and services.…”

“…Scholars have pointed to the path-dependent or historical influence that allows for such agglomerations to occur (Scott 1993(Scott , 2000Glaeser 2005); their ability to gain "lock in" (Scott 2000) at a "historical moment" that catalyzes dominance in a particular industry. Things are indeed set in motion at that moment in historywhether they be rapid innovations in semiconductors and microprocessors in Silicon Valley (Saxenian 1994) or the establishment of American Vogue in New York City (Rantisi 2004)-creating a sort of cumulative advantage. The initial advantage given by a historical moment catalyzes a region to continue to attract more labor pools, resources, and firms, thus leading to more innovation within the industry, more advantage, yet more labor pools and firms, and so forth, creating what Richard Merton (1968) eloquently termed a "Matthew Effect."…”

The Productive Role of ‘Quality of Place’: A Case Study of Fashion Designers in Toronto

“…Fashion has long been viewed as a 'global city' phenomenom (Breward and Gilbert, 2006). As evidence, there is a concentration of the world's top designers, retailers, magazines, consumers, and cultural capital in major centers such as Paris, New York, and Milan (McRobbie, 1998;Rantisi, 2002). However, the notion of an international fashion pyramid, where trends are defined at the top and then trickle down to lower tier fashion centers, has been disrupted in recent years as a number of 'second-tier' cities such as Toronto, Stockholm, and Auckland are attracting heightened visibility.…”