Corporate growth strategy is finally coming around to cluster theory—the general notion that concentrating industries in a region creates powerful advantages. To name just a few, a strong business cluster creates:
- A steady, lower-cost local supply base
- Incentives for local higher ed. training
- A consistent customer base and talent pipeline
- More personal industry relationships
The geographic concentration of a thriving business cluster is aided by many macroeconomic factors, such as investment in entrepreneurship incentives and active public-private coalitions. Even individual companies stand to gain big from keeping an eye on their local business clusters’ trends and needs.
At Waymaker Group, our nationally recognized experts are ready to help you conduct a business cluster analysis and gain insights into the best opportunities for your regional innovation cluster.
But I’m a Business Leader. Why Should I Care?
Why bother with macroeconomics?, one might ask. Isn’t that the government’s job? In a market that’s led by traditional industry, the value of devoting private investments to long-term community growth—rather than immediate interests—isn’t always clear. This is a fair line of questioning, and it comes with a definitive answer.
A truly thriving innovation ecosystem requires more than investing in yourself (or waiting for the government to do it). A macroeconomic, big-picture innovation strategy actually supports the advancement of your entire tech cluster. This means powerful, long-lasting, forward momentum for your company, your community, and society as a whole. The cluster becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Yale Professor William Nordhaus has demonstrated how much broad innovation benefits a society, even as innovation leaders are able to amass incredible profits and wealth. In an enlightening Forbes article entitled “Innovation Benefits Society, Not Just The Rich,” leadership strategy contributor Bill Conerly lays out Nordhaus’s findings. Here’s a summary:
- Innovation leaders like Bezos, Gates, and Buffet have been able to amass incredible wealth for themselves and their businesses by pursuing a profit motive.
- However, innovators capture just 2.2% of total social surpluses in wealth from innovation.
- The remainder directly benefits society by advancing technology, increasing market efficiency, reducing prices, and vastly improving standards of living.
- According to Nordhaus, innovation has cut the work it took to generate 1,000 lumen-hours of light from 58 labor-hours (in the stone age) to less than four-tenths of one second (in 1992).
The bottom line is that the most significant societal achievements and business success stories come from large-scale innovation. Advancements anywhere and everywhere in the tech cluster will deepen the well of critical resources and assets in the region around your business.
Team Up With Waymaker Group. Strengthen Your Business Cluster.
Our experts are ready to conduct a robust innovation cluster analysis that will reveal your best opportunities for lucrative tech investments, mutually profitable partnerships, and a fresh surge in the talent pipeline. We’ll examine the health of your entrepreneurial ecosystem, the talent gaps in the workforce, the emerging tech that will fuel success, and more.
The Waymaker Group team has decades of experience forging valuable relationships among parties with common interests, such as the local higher education institutions that supply top-end local talent (skilled in the areas you actually need). Contact our principal to learn more about how our Waymaker experts can use data-driven insights to put your business cluster (and your business) on a sustainable, long-term growth path.
