3.2. The cluster-specific innovation environment
While the common innovation infrastructure sets
the general context for innovation in an economy, it is
ultimately firms, influenced by their microeconomic
environment, that develop and commercialize innovation.
Thus, national innovative capacity depends upon
the microeconomic environment present in a nation’s
industrial clusters (as highlighted in Fig. 1 and the diamonds
on the right-hand side of Fig. 3). A variety of
cluster-specific circumstances, investments, and policies
impact the extent to which a country’s industrial
clusters compete on the basis of technological innovation
(Porter, 1990). Innovation in particular pairs of
clusters may also be complementary to one another,
both due to knowledge spillovers and other interrelationships
(represented by lines connecting selected diamonds
in Fig. 3). Just as a strong cluster innovation
environment can amplify the strengths of the common
innovation infrastructure, a weak one can stifle
them. For example, despite a strong infrastructure supporting
scientific education and technical training in
France, national regulatory policies towards pharmaceuticals
have limited innovation in the French pharmaceutical
cluster through 1970s and 1980s (Thomas,
1994).