This original and timely book presents the most comprehensive, empirically based analysis of clustering dynamics in the high-technology sector across liberal and co-ordinated market economies. By carefully exploring and comparing ICT and biotechnology in the UK and Austria, the authors find evidence that industry innovation characteristics can overcome some of the supposed constraints of such 'varieties of capitalism' and themselves usher in regulatory reforms. They also provide a first examination of the ways in which firms utilize knowledge spillovers in such settings. In addition, the book highlights the practices of 'free-riders' and the excess land rents that they and more collaborative firms endure as 'diseconomies of agglomeration'. Finally, arising from these findings, the authors present a new post-sectoral, post-cluster policy methodology called 'Innovative Platform Policy', which they believe is more attuned to the dynamics of the knowledge economy. This book will be of great interest to academics, especially regional and industrial economists, economic geographers, regional scientists, political scientists and economic sociologists. It will also appeal to students and researchers, as well as government officials in industry, trade and economic development at national and regional levels.

This ground-breaking book offers a coherent theoretical analysis of contemporary industrial knowledge flow dynamics. Furthermore, it advances wide-ranging and varied empirical findings from international comparative research which demonstrate that knowledge cross-pollination, often from industrially unrelated business sectors, is now commonplace in the economics of innovation. This, the authors argue, represents the rise of an externalized ?matrix? of knowledge flow dynamics among firms and industries. The book also examines related economic governance research that reveals the catalytic role that leading innovation policy agencies play in animating knowledge flow dynamics, particularly at the regional level. The chapters address various sectors including food and drink, biotechnology, ICT, new media, the automotive industry and tourism.This insightful book will appeal to policy-makers, researchers and students with an interest in regional innovation, industrial economics and knowledge.