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Industry Cluster Report

Do any of you have any experience finding/using/writing Industry Cluster Reports? I've been asked to do a study of the 7 county area, by SIC and produce a Cluster Report. I'm wondering just what defines a "cluster." 15 businesses in a county.... 20?

Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Kathleen Rainwater on June 30, 2009 at 11:02am: Emily,
According to two definitions I found, it looks like clusters have more to do with relationships between companies than the number of businesses.

BNET definition of a business cluster :http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/business+cluster.html

Wikipedia has a slightly different definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cluster and provides some background for the use of the term.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Kathleen Rainwater on June 30, 2009 at 11:09am: You can find more information on clusters at the Harvard Business School website:
http://www.isc.hbs.edu/econ-clusters.htm; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Emily Brown on July 1, 2009 at 7:43am: Hi Kathleen!

I actually used the Harvard and wiki definitions.

What I seemed to find was that a Cluster Report is something that is extremely time intensive- and is usually done by a firm or a team. Since it has just been me, I chose to look in Ref USA and see what the density of industries were in the area by SIC. It was a very long process, but if you ever need to know what industries are heavy in NE Oklahoma, I'm your girl. :)

Thanks so much for following up!; ▶ Reply to This