Joel Kotkin -- If the author is correct, then Enterprise Ireland's cluster concept is fatally flawed.
Both Enterprise Ireland and Shannon Development try to build up enterprise centres by attracting a cluster dynamic. That's often useful, but it can also miss the point of how effectively people at the periphery of a company can communicate directly to collaborators without being in the same geographic area.
In The Declustering of America, Kotkin says it's now "increasingly easy for a firm to operate in a dispersed manner". Kotkin limits his scope to geographic issues. It's a good read, because we're well into the phase of "the next company" described by Peter Drucker, who points to the "Internet and e-mail (that) have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications. This has meant that the most productive and most profitable way to organise is to disintegrate."
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