Conceptualizing multiple clusters in mega-city regions: The case of the biomedical industry in Beijing

Identifying configurations of multiple co‐located clusters by analyzing within‐ and between‐cluster linkages

“…When asked where the firms would hire lower-skilled or unskilled labor, almost all firms responded that these workers were hired from within a short distance, mostly from schools or facilities within or adjacent to their industry parks. This finding was not surprising as prior analysis indicated that the industry parks have the structure of clusters (Bathelt & Zhao, 2016;Zhao, 2016). For skilled labor, however, a similarly localized hiring pattern could not be expected (Lundh, 2011).…”

“…In our empirical analysis, we distinguish low-, medium-, and high-density linkages. Extending the assumptions of a previous qualitative study of the biomedical industry in Beijing (Bathelt & Zhao, 2016), we expect to find a structure where the three biomedical industry parks are similar to the scenario of collaborating clusters. This allows us to posit the following two propositions regarding inter-firm linkages within and across the three industry parks according to Figure 2:…”

“…This finding suggests that the three biomedical industry parks in Beijing can be viewed as clusters. Within these clusters, we found strong evidence for distinct knowledge ecologies driven by park‐specific research alliances (Bathelt & Zhao, ), and supported by frequent contacts and meetings in the context of government‐organized industry events. However, it is unrealistic to expect ideal‐type scenarios in real‐world investigations.…”

“…They are not likely to develop collaborative linkages or share knowledge between the clusters. Yet, if these industry parks grow to a critical size, they may each attract similar sets of F I G U R E 1 Different scenarios of multiple co-located clusters with the same industry core in city regions services and supply functions and become atomistic clusters in the city-region--yet with interregional and global pipeline linkages (Bathelt & Zhao, 2016). The scenario of three competing clusters is therefore characterized by strong cluster-specific knowledge ecologies and local buzz but few linkages across the separate entities that compete for the same resources ( Figure 1).…”

Government support and firm innovation performance in Chinese science and technology parks: The perspective of firm and sub‐park heterogeneity

“…Each sub‐park has its own size, age, public service and proximities with airports and universities; meanwhile, all sub‐parks are under the same policy framework (Lu, Zhang, & Reve, 2013). It provides ideal cases to analyse whether the factors of firms and spatially distinct sub‐parks, government support in particular, have influences on firms' innovation performance (Bathelt & Zhao, 2016).…”