Neighbourhood clusters and citywide technological diversification
Chen Z.; Zhang X.; van der Wouden F. Research Policy. DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105397.

The clustering of economic activities is widely considered to be a key driver of economic competitiveness. However, little is known how technological activities are clustered within cities and how such neighborhood concentration is associated with citywide technological diversification, as the existing literature tends to treat cities as homogenous units, neglecting their neighborhood dynamics and heterogeneity. To fill this gap, we develop a novel measurement framework to identify neighborhood-level technology clusters within 260 Chinese cities, using 16 million geo-coded patents from 2003 to 2018. We then link this neighborhood-level clustering measure with the rate, direction, and complexity of citywide diversification in patenting activities. We measure technological diversification as the entry of a new revealed comparative advantage in a city's patenting portfolio and find that neighborhood-level clusters (1) contribute to an increasing rate of diversification at the city level; (2) channel diversification toward technologies related to existing specializations; (3) are associated with more complex diversification. Our results suggest that zooming in on the micro-dynamics of tech clusters provides a more nuanced view of their advantages than is typically assumed. © 2025 The Authors

Industrial districts in medieval England: Examining the significance of the ‘elementary localisation of industry

Casson C.; Casson M. Business History. DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2025.2597763.

In Principles of Economics and Industry and Trade, Marshall considered how the localisation of industry in medieval England, c.1100 to 1560, could inform on subsequent agglomerations, but since then scholarship has focused mainly on Marshall’s findings on nineteenth–century manufacturing districts. This article seeks to redress the balance. It makes three contributions to the existing literature. Firstly, it extends the range of districts by focusing on the extractive industries of iron and salt; secondly, it relates evidence on medieval districts to Marshall’s earlier analysis; and thirdly it identifies the specific strengths and weaknesses of medieval districts relative to more modern ones. It identifies the main factors that boosted performance in medieval extractive districts: access to complementary resources, such as fuel, proximity to customers and royal patronage. The major weaknesses of medieval extractive industries were their ‘boom and bust’ lifecycle and the absence of a pool of hereditary knowledge. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Green and competitive: who influences the development of advanced frugal product characteristics?

Barnikol J. Technology Analysis and Strategic Management. DOI: 10.1080/09537325.2024.2319611.

The societal shift to a greener economy is subject to a trade-off. Green products are often more expensive than conventional products, making them less attractive and thus slowing down the transition. Advanced Frugal Innovations overcome this trade-off and are able to accelerate the transition through the inclusion of broader population groups. Based on a company survey, this research examines the influence of societal actors on green and cost-related product attributes that influence this trade-off using correlation analyses and meaningful illustrations. Using the German manufacturing sector as an example, this new database provides first empirical results that illustrate how societal and systemic agents affect the development of green and competitive products. The results indicate that the societal and systemic situation in Germany has an inhibiting effect. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Does early regional scientific leadership translate into lasting patenting advantage?

Filimonovic D.; Rutzer C.; Macher J.T.; Weder R. Research Policy. DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2026.105429.

This paper examines whether regions with early leadership in scientific research in an emerging technology achieve lasting patenting advantage in that technology. Using data on 27 emerging technologies (e.g., Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing) across U.S. Metropolitan regions over 20 years, we find that these ”pioneer” regions achieve a large and increasing patenting advantage. This effect is strongest in ”super-cluster” regions — those that combine pioneering scientific research in an emerging field with robust patenting capacity in related domains. Our findings highlight the critical role of early scientific leadership in shaping regional patenting trajectories, and offer policy insights for fostering technological invention in emerging technologies. © 2026 Elsevier B.V.

Building clusters without trust: Government as a relational architect in industrial cluster formation

Al-Tabbaa O.; Saadatyar F.S.; Choksy U.; Koghut M.; Vazife Z. European Management Review. DOI: 10.1111/emre.70018.

Industrial clusters in developing economies often confront a paradox: engineered by state policy yet lacking the pre-trust and shared norms that drive organic networks. Drawing on two industrial clusters in Iran, we unpack how government actors become “relational architects,” scaffolding structural and cognitive dimensions of social capital to seed collaboration where trust is absent. However, our study also warns that heavy-handed, top-down site selections and mandated partner mixes can fracture the nascent bonds they intend to forge. In contrast, well-placed intermediaries and collaboratively crafted capacity-building forums can repair those fractures, allowing genuine trust to emerge—though only after sustained, state-mediated interaction. By questioning the long-held belief that trust must precede collective action, we demonstrate a reversed sequence: structural links and cognitive alignment can give rise to relational capital over time. These insights offer cautionary implications for policy: instead of simply transplanting blueprints, policymakers must blend directive measures with authentic, context-sensitive facilitation if they hope to build resilient, trust-based clusters. © 2025 European Academy of Management.

Technological agglomerations and the emergence of artificial intelligence start-up ecosystems in Europe

Vásquez Ó.; Sandulli F.D.; Gallego J. Technology in Society. DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2025.103092.

The emergence of new industries is shaped by intricate geographical dynamics influenced by multiple factors. Yet, the rationales underpinning the locational choices of AI-based startups remain insufficiently understood. Traditional explanations have largely emphasized agglomeration economies, but their applicability to the AI industry requires further examination. This study investigates the growth of the AI industry across seven major European regions, uncovering two distinct locational patterns associated with different stages of industry evolution. In the nascent phase, the industry benefits primarily from intra-industry co-location effects and knowledge spillovers, which help mitigate technological risks. As the industry advances, however, cross-industry linkages become increasingly important, playing a pivotal role in addressing commercial risks and sustaining development. Overall, the findings highlight the dynamic interplay between technological and commercial risks, offering new insights into the shifting rationales and spatial dynamics that shape the emergence of the AI industry. © 2025 The Authors

Hidden champions and knowledge spillovers: innovation-enhancing agglomeration effects and niche technology specificity

Lehmann E.E.; Schenkenhofer J.; Vismara S. Small Business Economics. DOI: 10.1007/s11187-025-00999-3.

To achieve market and technology leadership, innovation is essential for niche market leaders. While research suggests that regions benefit economically from a high concentration of niche market leaders, it is still unclear which role locating close to one another plays for their innovation performance. Therefore, we contribute to existing literature that studies external factors of firm-level innovation. We analyze 1372 German niche market leaders and study whether (1) being located in a cluster improves their innovation performance and (2) if the impact of locating in a cluster varies depending on the diversity of industries within the cluster. We measured the spatial agglomeration using the location quotient. Our findings show that being located in a cluster increases the patenting rate by 1.49 times. This effect is more pronounced in clusters with more diverse industries, indicating a lower level of technology specificity. This suggests that technology specificity has an impact on a company’s ability to take advantage of positive knowledge from other companies in the same cluster. Finally, we conducted several tests to ensure the robustness of our analysis. The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) refers to the discretionary choice of the spatial unit, and we tested different spatial unit levels to account for this. Additionally, we used entropy balancing to confirm the positive effect of cluster location on innovation, comparing with a control set of mass-market firms. Our study concludes with implications for both corporate management and public policy. © The Author(s) 2025.

A place-based view on the relationship between local community commercial attractiveness and entrepreneurial interest: a multi-method analysis

Galbraith C.S.; Vestal A.; Stiles C.H. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. DOI: 10.1080/08985626.2025.2480302.

The notion of place-based entrepreneurship has become an important concept in understanding modern entrepreneurial behaviour. Within this context, regional and local development and entrepreneurial activity are inexorably intertwined. One critical component in this relationship is a community’s attractiveness. This study uses a combination of methods, including real-time participant-driven photo elicitation (PDPE), a co-occurrence thematic analysis, and a Bayesian classification analysis (BDRA), to assess entrepreneurial interest in 110 unique commercial locations. The analysis identifies five ‘built-environment’ factors important to entrepreneurial location interest, four of which are under the direct control of local governments: commercial signage, landscaping, automobile congestion, and building maintenance and appearance. These findings can assist community planners and regional developers in developing strategies to improve entrepreneurial interest in their local communities. © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Dynamic optimal distinctive configurations enabling manufacturing firms to achieve high green innovation efficiency

Li J.; Qiu X.; Zhu J.; Pang Y. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2025.124510.

When undertaking greening innovation activities, firms often encounter the paradoxical challenge of meeting regulatory compliance requirements while simultaneously pursuing competitive differentiation. Drawing on optimal distinctiveness theory, this study develops an antecedent framework that integrates rule-based drivers (regulatory, normative, and mimetic pressures) with choice-based drivers (executives' green awareness, green technological capability, and management capability) to explain firms' green innovation activities. Using dynamic Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) on panel data from 82 Chinese manufacturing firms between 2017 and 2022, the study identifies multiple configurations leading to high green innovation efficiency and uncovers their temporal evolution. The findings indicate three effective strategic patterns: a market-oriented strategy, in which firms use mimetic pressure as a benchmark to manage uncertainty while pursuing differentiated green practices; a cognition-driven strategy, in which executives' environmental awareness guides sustained innovation in response to long-term transformational pressures; and a capability-enabled strategy, in which regulatory pressure is leveraged as a signal for technological upgrading to build unique green innovation trajectories. By demonstrating how rule-based and choice-based logics interact as complementary mechanisms, this study further extends optimal distinctiveness theory by elucidating the dynamic processes through which firms balance conformity and differentiation in the context of green innovation. © 2025 Elsevier Inc.

Governance in clusters: a systematic literature review

Cassanego P.V., Junior; Fleck C.F.; Abbondanza M.V.P.; Rodrigues P.R. International Journal of Business Innovation and Research. DOI: 10.1504/IJBIR.2026.152082.

 The study’s objective is to analyse the state-of-the-art research on governance in clusters. Studies in ‘business, management, and accounting’ of the Scopus and Web of Science databases were mapped and analysed. The analyses arranged in this work were conducted through the three bibliometrics laws: Lotka’s, Bradford’s and Zipf’s. The descriptive character analysis of the textual Corpus of the research revealed a total of 91 articles. Iramuteq and VOSviewer software were used. Concerning this research, it was verified that 14 authors formed the elite of the textual Corpus. Regarding the reputation of journals, the first zone includes nine journals that would be the most productive. It was possible to verify that most periodicals were distributed in four countries: the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, and Canada. Regarding the term cluster governance, it was found to be linked to the term industrial cluster. Copyright © 2026 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Company Location, Business Environment and Digital Maturity as Drivers of Environmental Innovation in Business

Heras-Rosas C.; Herrera-Ballesteros J.; Veiga P.; Rodrigues R. Business Strategy and the Environment. DOI: 10.1002/bse.70539.

Environmental protection has emerged as a global priority in the contemporary context. As pivotal actors in the transition towards sustainable development, companies play a crucial role through the adoption of environmental innovations. This study investigates how organisational characteristics—specifically geographical location, business environment and digital maturity—influence the adoption of environmental innovations, employing machine learning models to develop a robust predictive framework. Although previous research has highlighted the relevance of these factors, their specific dynamics and interactions remain insufficiently explored. Drawing on data from Flash Eurobarometer 486, which comprises information from 16,365 firms across 27 EU Member States and 12 additional countries, this analysis examines how geographical context and internal capabilities shape environmental innovation performance, with particular attention given to the moderating role of firm size. The study leverages machine learning algorithms, including logistic regression, random forests and gradient boosting machines, to capture complex relationships and address challenges such as overfitting. The results demonstrate that location, business environment and digital maturity significantly influence environmental innovation. Moreover, company size moderates these relationships, either amplifying or attenuating their effects, thus providing a nuanced understanding of how firms can optimise their characteristics to advance sustainable practices. By integrating machine learning techniques into the analysis, this research contributes to the literature on environmental innovation by offering a systematic approach to identifying key drivers. These findings hold critical implications for policymakers and business leaders seeking to enhance sustainability through innovation. © 2026 The Author(s). Business Strategy and the Environment published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Success and Failure in Blockchain-Based Interorganizational Ecosystems: A Governance Perspective

Hanisch M.; Roozen P.; Theodosiadis V. Journal of Management. DOI: 10.1177/01492063261420752.

Interorganizational ecosystems require governance arrangements that can align diverse and often competing organizations around a shared value proposition. Although blockchain, as a form of digital governance, promises to facilitate large-scale collaboration by codifying and enforcing rules, decentralizing control, and ensuring verifiable data exchange, many blockchain-based interorganizational ecosystems nevertheless fail. Leveraging 155 interviews and detailed internal records from a large technology provider covering 81 interorganizational blockchain projects across 25 industries, supplemented by archival evidence on the trajectories of 196 projects and 70 podcast interviews, we develop a grounded theory explaining how governance misalignments trigger collaboration breakdowns. Specifically, we identify three underlying governance tradeoffs that expose tensions between blockchain’s network-centric rules and actor-centric needs: consistency versus flexibility in coordination, system reliance versus actor reliance in trust and control, and ecosystem utility versus member utility in incentives. These tradeoffs are amplified or attenuated by corresponding boundary conditions related to scale and cohesion (for coordination), co-opetition (for trust and control), and value logics (for incentives). Our study advances governance theory by explaining how blockchain interacts with traditional governance, shapes critical tradeoffs, and influences ecosystem success and failure. We also offer design principles to help managers navigate the inherent governance tradeoffs in ecosystem collaboration. © The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Reimagining entrepreneurial ecosystems for sustainable development

Stroila I.; Steffens P.; Plewa C. Journal of Business Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2026.116132.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are widely recognized for fostering innovation, job creation, and economic growth. However, increasing attention is being paid to the negative externalities they may produce, including environmental degradation, social inequality, and reduced well-being. In response, the concept of sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems has emerged, aiming to align entrepreneurship with broader social and environmental goals. This paper presents an empirically grounded conceptual elaboration of sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems by building on the notion of ecosystem well-being from social-ecological research and incorporating insights from institutional theory. We identify four well-being dimensions—diversity, quality, resilience, opportunity and choice provision—that ecosystems must cultivate to support sustainable development. Drawing on case studies from Stockholm, Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Silicon Valley, we show how actors engage in enabling, framing, and boundary-spanning work to shape their ecosystems. Our study advances the theoretical foundation of sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems by offering insights into how they can support societal well-being. © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Building deep-tech entrepreneurial ecosystems: factors that promote the presence of deep-tech startups in European regions

Micol F.; Leendertse J.; van Rijnsoever F. Journal of Technology Transfer. DOI: 10.1007/s10961-026-10327-w.

Deep-tech startups aim to implement and commercialize novel technologies that have the potential to address societal challenges. Due to current geopolitical trends and the potential of such technologies to rejuvenate the industrial power of regions, European governments are attempting to foster the creation of this type of startups within their borders. However, they struggle to do so effectively due to a limited understanding of the factors that support the emergence of deep-tech startups. We combine the generic entrepreneurial ecosystem framework with specific deep-tech enabling elements to develop and test hypotheses about which factors influence the presence of deep-tech startups on a regional scale. We develop a thesaurus to identify deep-tech startups at the regional level and test our hypotheses using quantitative analyses in 272 European NUTS-2 regions located in 27 EU countries and the UK. We show that the presence of specific deep-tech enabling knowledge and talent is more important for facilitating the emergence of deep-tech startups than the quality of the generic entrepreneurial ecosystem and the presence of specific deep-tech enabling formal institutions. The results of our study thus provide timely guidance to support public administrations in facilitating the emergence of deep-tech startups in regions. © The Author(s) 2026.

Sustainable business model innovation in rural entrepreneurial ecosystems: a conceptual framework and research agenda

Kaus J.; Entsminger J. Small Business Economics. DOI: 10.1007/s11187-026-01181-z.

Sustainable business model innovation (SBMI) is particularly important in rural economies, yet SBMI research has largely ignored rural contexts and lacked a holistic treatment of drivers. Rural entrepreneurs face heightened vulnerability due to their reliance on natural amenities sensitive to disruption, and their limited access to resources, networks, and institutional support. SBMI provides a critical pathway for enhancing the economic and socio-ecological resilience of firms and local communities, enabling diversification while integrating sustainability into business strategies. In rural contexts, SBMI likely unfolds differently compared to better-studied urban settings, and enabling mechanisms are underexplored. To advance the field, we develop a holistic conceptual framework of SBMI that is salient to these oft-ignored rural contexts and offer propositions on how these mechanisms may operate to drive rural SBMI. We incorporate four interrelated factors—entrepreneurial networks (ENs), rootedness in place (RIP), dynamic capabilities (DCs), and sustainability orientation (SO)—that together shape how rural entrepreneurial organizations adapt practices to environmental and market shifts and integrate sustainability into their business models. By emphasizing the interplay between rural ventures, their networks, and their embeddedness within rural places, the framework underscores the centrality of place and entrepreneurial ecosystems in fostering rural SBMI. It offers theoretical and practical insights for designing interventions that strengthen resilience, promote sustainability, and support the long-term vitality of rural entrepreneurial ecosystems. © The Author(s) 2026.

Developing Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Place, Processes, People

Bennett L.I.H.; Webber D.J.; Brooks C. Developing Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Place, Processes, People. DOI: 10.4337/9781035367016.

This insightful book examines the factors shaping the success of entrepreneurial ecosystems. While policymakers and academics are attracted to the potential of entrepreneurship for fostering growth and regional development, the mechanisms and processes that drive thriving ecosystems remain insufficiently understood. This book provides new perspectives on how the geographical and relational boundaries of an entrepreneurial ecosystem are located and defined. © Laura I.H. Bennett, Don J. Webber and Chay Brooks 2026.

Orchestrating Ecosystem Resources for Sustainability: Coopetition, Digital Transformation, and Disruptive Sustainable Innovation

Jung J.-S.; Lee M.-J. Business Strategy and the Environment. DOI: 10.1002/bse.70895.

As sustainability transitions accelerate, firms increasingly engage in innovation ecosystems to pursue disruptive sustainable innovation (DSI). Nevertheless, empirical understanding regarding how innovation ecosystem coopetition—simultaneous cooperation and competition among interdependent actors—translates into sustainability-oriented disruption remains limited. Drawing on resource orchestration theory (ROT), this study examined the differential effects of cooperation and competition on DSI and clarified the mechanisms of digital transformation through which these effects unfold. Specifically, this study investigated the mediating roles of digital transformation breadth and depth, as well as the moderating influence of open innovation. Using two-wave survey data from 256 firms embedded in South Korea's innovation clusters and analyzing the model via partial least squares structural equation modeling, pronounced asymmetries were uncovered. Competition exerts a direct positive effect on DSI, whereas cooperation does not generate immediate disruptive outcomes. Instead, cooperation contributes to DSI only indirectly by fostering digital transformation, with the breadth and depth of digitalization fully mediating this relationship. By contrast, for competition, digital transformation depth provides a complementary mediation pathway, suggesting that deeply embedded digital capabilities are critical for converting competitive pressures into sustainability-oriented disruption. Furthermore, open innovation positively moderates the relationship between cooperation and digital transformation but has no moderating effect on competition, suggesting that knowledge openness facilitates collaborative digital learning rather than intensifying competitive dynamics. Overall, this study advances the understanding of how ecosystem relationships, digital capabilities, and knowledge openness jointly shape DSI. These findings offer actionable insights for managers and policymakers seeking to strategically orchestrate ecosystem interactions and digital transformation mechanisms to accelerate sustainability transitions. © 2026 The Author(s). Business Strategy and the Environment published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.