MULTI-CLUSTER ADVANTAGE: THE LOCUS OF INNOVATION IN CITY-REGIONS

Abstract

The emergence of city-regions – urban agglomerations with more than 1 million inhabitants – is an emerging trend observed by scholars in geography, urban planning and strategy. City-regions are often home to multiple industry clusters which provide unique manufacturing eco-systems of overlapping supply chains and interdependent production capabilities that interact, resonate and offer unique opportunities for innovation, cross fertilization and breakthroughs in value creation. This paper uses the case example of Cincinnati’s tristate city-region to develop a framework for identifying multi-cluster opportunities for innovation that transcend individual companies and individual industries to become the locus of innovation and global competitive advantage.