Emerging companies need certain common inputs—for example, infrastructure, specialized legal and accounting services, suppliers, labor pools with a specialized knowledge base—that reside outside the company. Companies in a common geographic area share the fixed costs of these resources external to the company. As more and more startups in an area c

... See more

We now have in hand all the major processes at work in a growing city economy. First, the city finds in an older city or cities an expanding market for its initial export work, and it builds up a collection of numerous local businesses to supply producers’ goods and services to the initial export work. Second, some of the local suppliers of produce

... See more

One commonality that we find when looking across these clusters is that they are all geographically close by. This by itself shouldn't surprise us. Geoffrey West's fantastic work shows us that cities, for instance, help create exactly this dynamic. In bringing people together it increases the rate of reproduction of ideas, speeding up the emergence... See more

When cities that have already had import-replacing episodes in their past, and thus already have large and comprehensive local economies, go on to replace imports rapidly yet again, they garner an economic margin in their local economies for adding extraordinary, even unprecedented, goods and services. It was just such cities, already big but growi

... See more