外文翻译-集群、网络和竞争优势.doc

Ⅲ.外文翻译 外文翻译之一 CLUSTERING, NETWORKING AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Author: John Humphrey Hubert Schmitz Nationality:U.K. Derivation: Principles for promoting clusters networks of SMEs, Commissioned by the Small and Medium Enterprises Branch October 1995 Industrial districts in Europe appear to have secured competitive advantage in the supply to demand niche markets. They have done this by competing mainly on the basis of quality, design, speed of innovation and speed of response. This might seem far removed from, for example, the cotton knitwear cluster of Tiruppur in South India. This cluster has achieved great success in exporting basic cotton textiles, but as yet it shows little capacity to move into higher value market niches (Swaminathan and Jeyaranjan 1994). An enormous gulf remains between the small knitwear firms of Tiruppur and the ‘ networks of technologically sophisticated, highly flexible manufacturing firms ’ which Piore and Sabel (1984: 17) characterize as the basis of the Italian success. However, it will be argued here that these differing cases do have important things in common, and that what they have in common provides the potential for clusters such as Tiruppur to upgrade their facilities and become technologically more sophisticated and more capable of competing in demanding markets. What they have in common is the competitive advantage which arises when enterprises which are clustered together are driven forward by the needs of demanding customers. The idea that there are gains in clustering is old hat in industrial economics. It can be traced back to Alfred Marshall’s analysis of industrial districts in Britain. In his Principles of Economics (1st edition, 1890), Marshall stressed the economies which ‘can often be secured by the concentration of many small businesses of a similar character in particular localities’ (8th edition, 1920, 221). He refers to such gains as ‘external economies’ and sees them as particularly relevant to small firms. T