Agglomeration and Firm Performance

This contributed volume studies and explains the effect of agglomeration on a firm’s innovation and performance. It presents new cases as well as new topics within the agglomeration phenomenon, exploring also their role under the Great Recession. Beyond the analysis of regions or clusters, this volume focuses on firms within agglomerations and captures this phenomenon from different perspectives, contexts and diverse literatures. Specifically, it looks at the question under what circumstances exert generate benefits on firms’ performance, and how those gains are generated and distributed, usually asymmetrically, across agglomerated firms. In this context, the book addresses topics such as networks, collocation, labor mobility, firm’s strategies, innovation, competitiveness and collective actions across a diverse set of literatures, including economic geography, business economics, management, social networks, industrial districts, international business, sociology or industry dynamics.  

Fiorenza Belussi obtained her PhD in 1993, from Spru, Science Policy Research Unit (University of Sussex, United Kingdom). Since 2010 Fiorenza Belussi is Full Professor. She has participated in several international projects financed by the EU (DGXII- ADAPT, TSER), UNIDO, CNR, the Italian Ministry of Scientific Research, 7° program 2007-8, Interreg IIIC, 7° program 2009-10: ICaTSEM- Institutional change and trajectories of socio-economic development modes, Smart-spec (2013-2016). Her areas of interest include: a) management of innovation and creativity, creative industries, theoretical models on innovation diffusion through gatekeepers; studies of open innovation, local systems of innovation; b) International business and the impact of globalisation on local economies. Dr. Belussi has published more than 190 articles and book chapters. Among others, she has published in: International Journal of Technology Management, Futures, European Planning Studies, Research Policy, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Urban Studies, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Industry & Innovation, Regional Studies, and numerous other Italian Journals.

Jose Luis Hervas-Oliver is Full Professor of Strategy and Innovation at the Universitat Politènica de València. His research interest lies at the intersection between strategy/innovation and economic geography. His research has been published in management and economic geography journals such as  Research Policy, Technovation, Journal of Economic Geography, Papers in Regional Science, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, European Planning Studies, Journal of Business Research, Small Business Economics,   Journal of Technology Transfer, Research-Technology Management, among many others, along with chapters in books published by Springer, Edward Elgar or Routledge, among others.  Dr. Hervas-Oliver is at the present time director of the ECO2015:63645-R Open Innovation in Clusters, founded by the Spanish Ministry of Economics.