South American Cluster: A Practical Case Study

Abstract

This paper studies Guadalajara’s cluster in its major aspects. It tries to pinpoint and identify the triggers that made this agglomeration a new Silicon Valley. One of the most outstanding features of this city is its vigorous export performance in the electronic industry that is why in our study, we focused on that specific industry. We found out that rules and regulations in this geographic area played a critical role when it comes to attracting foreign exportations and local investors especially in the electronic industry. Nevertheless, the study of the case of Guadalajara verifies that different clusters have their own explanations in regard to their emergence which is specific and unique to different circumstances and geographical locations. In fact results showed that Asian countries electronic cluster differs in terms of aspects from the one from Mexican city. Past researches based on Asian clusters only took into consideration the conception and the initial stage of the process. The description of other stages of growth and development in the Mexican city helped us distinguishing between anchor firms and seminal firms which help in understanding how clusters are created (general) based on the fact that seminal firms are not essentially supporting firms and supporting firms may not be described as seminal firms.