Economic theory has long been indulged with the study of industrial clusters. The standards, threads and gov-erning parameters of clusters provide a very fruitful area of study for a plethora of disciplines besides and beyond economics, such as strategic management, mathematics, life sciences and organizational manage-ment in general. Industrial clusters hold such a promi-nent position as decision-affecting entities, that in many frameworks they directly influence national and international policy in a basic level, through their needs and in a secondary level, through their linkages to other industries and their weight upon the economic cycle itself. Through this paper we attempt a critical examination as to the factors formulating the competitive advantage of industrial clusters and within a second focal direction, the competitive advantage of maritime clusters in particular. This work aspires to contribute to the body of knowledge with respect to maritime clusters from a strategic management standpoint.

1. THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF
MARITIME CLUSTERS
Peter J. Stavroulakis
PhD Student, Department of Maritime Studies, University of Piraeus
Stratos Papadimitriou
Professor, Department of Maritime Studies, University of Piraeus
Yannis Koliousis
PhD Student, Department of Maritime Studies, University of Piraeus
5th International Symposium on Ship Operations, Management and Economics
28-29 May 2015, Eugenides Foundation

2. Introduction
 Mapping of factors that formulate competitive
advantage within maritime clusters
1. Clusters directly influence policy through their
weight upon the economic cycle
2. Interesting construct for strategic management
topics
Methodology
• Literature review
• Critical analysis

3. Bi-fold situation today
 Instruments and empirical benchmarks from a
range of:
1. process applications
2. dynamics
3. mathematical modeling
4. strategic management
5. management
6. policy drafting
7. cultural characteristics
 But clusters have proven elusive for reasons of
natural compliance

4. Compliance to Natural Paradox
 Natural compliance with exact reference to:
1. natural circumstances
2. natural governing parameters
 In nature we find instances of clusters or indeed
of manifestations of abundance through one too
many paradoxes
 All clusters have one very mesmerizing thing in
common
 Whether we are referring to natural clusters of
insects, or industrial trans-national clusters, there
are governing paradoxes in the brew

5. Scarcity within Clusters
 Through the ever-constraining scarcity
principle we witness the paradoxical
abundant if not saturated presence of
entities that are there for the kill
 Paradoxically said principle makes them all
healthier, more dynamic and stronger,
simultaneously
 But within systems on the ‘edge of chaos’
(Macintosh et alli, 2007) there is wisdom

6. Cluster Theory Origin
 Though von Thünen’s (1826) work Der isolierte
Staat has been given credit (Andersson et alli,
2004)
 Alfred Marshall (1890/1920) is widely accepted
as the forefather of industrial cluster theory:
1. better access to skilled labor
2. specialized suppliers
3. knowledge spillovers
 In addition to physical conditions they are
considered as the drivers of industrial clusters’
competitiveness

7. Could Marshall Signify
More?
 ‘Creating new wants’: network that facilitates the
constant germination of new ideas
 What today we coin as the ‘system of innovation’
 ‘Character of people’ and to the institutions that
formulate the cultural milieu
 Stochastic paradox “are as it were in the air...”
mention referring to trade skill-set acquisition
deriving from localization

8. Wealth of Nations, 1776
 Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ has come to be a
distinct economics’ benchmark
 Could his ‘domestic industry’ be a component of a
clustered industry?
 Reconciliation of individual interest with collective
prosperity (a central cluster paradox as well)
 The good of the part is directly linked to the good
of the whole, even if the whole is responsible for
the framework of adversaries and finite resources
that situates the part

9. Michael Porter’s The Competitive
Advantage of Nations (1990)
 The ‘diamond model’ is widely accepted and
utilized today
 ‘Location paradox’ that is present whence
globalization can co-exist with locational
complementarities
 “Paradoxically, the most enduring competitive
advantages in a global economy seem to be local”
 Competition that drives cooperation and vice
versa

10. Industrial Cluster Dimensions
 Knowledge Management (Pinch et alli, 2003;
Carpinetti, 2012; Lai et alli, 2014)
 Industrial clusters do facilitate knowledge creation
that in turn drives innovation
 Jing (2011) extracts six factors upon which the
competitive advantage of a maritime cluster is
founded:
1. external scale and scope economy
2. regional resources
3. government function
4. reduction of transaction costs
5. effect of learning and innovation
6. coordination mechanism of the cluster

11. Innovation
 Lin and Sun (2010): correlation of competitive
advantage along with industrial cluster
manifestation and the importance of
1. ‘innovation culture’
2. ‘self-reinforcing’ factors
3. ‘factor conditions’
 Internationalization can be inversely
correlated with culture as a driving force
 This could be perceived as an instance of
Porter’s ‘location paradox’

12. Culture
 Akoorie and Ding (2009) study the culture of
1. entrepreneurship
2. networks
3. government support
 Culture and innovation are interconnected
 Kuo (2013) analyzes the dimensions of
1. market orientation
2. performance
3. commitment
 Importance of human factor’s commitment to
organizational culture

13. Substantiated Observation
 All dimensions are discrete but at the same time
interconnected
 Industrial clusters are a function of:
1. innovation
2. culture
3. trust and communication
4. competition/cooperation
5. oversight
6. linkages and/to physical conditions
7. intrinsic paradox
 Factors that interlock to lead to cluster opulence

14. Maritime Clusters
 Zhang and Lam (2013) provide a ‘predator-prey’
model; their correlation of maritime clusters
with a natural systems’ model
 Jin and Zhen (2013) similarly investigate
maritime cluster dynamics utilizing ecological
models to extract and compare competitive
advantages
 It seems that clusters of any kind find themselves
composed of nature, or at least centrally infused
with natural elements and functions

15. Maritime Policy
and Innovation
 Othman et alli (2011) provide an overview of
competitive advantage and its implications with
regard to policy
 Oversight is an important aspect of the health of
a maritime cluster
 Pinto and De Andrade (2013) study maritime
clusters’ innovation drivers to return the notion
that maritime clusters have similar innovation
capability
 The competitive advantage within industrial
clusters could lead to the formulation of different
typologies of the innovation system

16. Maritime Competitiveness
and Culture
 Laaksonen and Mäkinen (2013) reference the
holistic environment that the clusters’ health is
dependent upon
 Conflicting stakes all materializing within a cluster
perspective as a symbiotic manifestation
 Doloreux and Shearmur (2009) stress the
importance of a culture of entrepreneurship and
collaboration that will serve as a base of effective
cluster policy
 Pattern (differences that seem to share common
values) guiding cluster dynamics

17. Maritime Clusters’
Corollaries
 The factors formulating competitive
advantage within a maritime cluster are of the
same stock as generic industrial clusters
 Provide more insight as to the horizontal
differences of different cluster formations
 Maritime clusters seem to be yet another
instance of industrial clusters that includes a
streamlined dynamic crystallization of
competitive advantage

18. Paradox Revisited
 It’s within paradox that competitive advantages
reside and flower
 The days of the survival of the fittest have long come
to pass
 The not so fit have managed to survive through
adaptation and the creation of new needs, markets
and values
 Cluster theory may hold the potential to transform
firms, industries, nations and above all, people
through mutual benefit and competitive symbiosis

19. Nature’s Paradigm
 Evolution is nature’s intrinsic application of
innovation, for innovation and evolution share the
same vision:
 Convenient survival through contesting the old and
adapting to perpetual change
 Culture provides the fuel for innovation
 Within the intricate network of the cluster’s entities:
1. trust
2. knowledge sharing
3. diverse modes of population interaction
4. complementary and constructive oversight

20. Clusters’ Essentials
 The manifestation of a culture of mutualism
 Fertile operations through the acceptance of
the operations of the environment
 The cluster’s competitive advantage is the
necessity that environmental components
choose their destiny for themselves
 Our stake is not at what they choose, but in the
fact that they are there to make an unbiased
choice in the first place

21. Clusters’ Caveats
 In no way provides a deterministic stylobate
for success
 There are no absolute certainties for any
members of a cluster, or the cluster itself
 Intrinsic danger of hinting to universal
applicability whence viability is nothing but
local
 Attempts to duplicate location-specific
competitive advantage may face catastrophic
failure

22. Conclusions
 Literature though abundant has plenty of future
qualitative and quantitative potential
 The competitive advantage of the firms that are
active within an industrial cluster setting
1. generation of new knowledge, that exactly because
of a
2. culture that fosters prosperity of ideas and
mutualism (culture does remind us of a catalyst’s
features), leads to distinctive blossoming of
3. parallel innovation

23. Limitations and Future Directions
 Conclusions, extracts and analyses are destined
to be restricted
 Theoretical analysis that should be contested and
put to the test in order to investigate its
reliability and validity
 Future research can focus on
1. typologies extraction
2. instrument formulation
3. theoretical cultivation of dimensions
4. practical experimentations
5. meta-analysis to further explore the instruments of
competitive advantage from an empirical standpoint

24. Thank you for your attention!
Peter J. Stavroulakis (pjstav@gmail.com)
Prof. Stratos Papadimitriou (stratos.papadimitriou@gmail.com)
Yannis Koliousis (kolious@gmail.com)
Department of Maritime Studies, University of Piraeus
Acknowledgement
The publication of this paper has been partly supported by the University of Piraeus Research Center