This contributed volume studies and explains the effect of agglomeration on a firm's innovation and performance. It presents new cases as well as new topics within the agglomeration phenomenon, exploring also their role under the Great Recession. Beyond the analysis of regions or clusters, this volume focuses on firms within agglomerations and captures this phenomenon from different perspectives, contexts and diverse literatures. Specifically, it looks at the question under what circumstances exert generate benefits on firms' performance, and how those gains are generated and distributed, usually asymmetrically, across agglomerated firms. In this context, the book addresses topics such as networks, collocation, labor mobility, firm's strategies, innovation, competitiveness and collective actions across a diverse set of literatures, including economic geography, business economics, management, social networks, industrial districts, international business, sociology or industry dynamics.  

1. Cluster Advantage and Firm Performance: A Shift into the Future.- Part 1. Agglomerations and Performance.- 2. Effects of Being Located in a Cluster on Economic Actors.- 3. Pathways of innovation: The I-district effect revisited.- 4. Does innovation trigger internationalisation of clusters? – the case of Polish boiler-making cluster.- 5. Inward FDI and skilled labor force in Veneto’s industrial districts.- Part 2. Agglomeration and Firm's Performance.- 6. Marshallian industrial district evolution: technological impacts and firms heterogeneity.-  7. Where should I locate my hotel? An in-depth analysis of the cluster effect on hotel’s performance.- 8. The story of cluster as a cross-boundary concept: from local development to management studies.- 9. How local knowledge networks and firm internal characteristics evolve across time inside science parks.- 10. The role of leading firms in explaining evolutionary paths of growth:  Italian and Turkish clusters on the move.- 11. New roles for supporting organizations in clusters: enhancing connectedness in knowledge networks.- Part 3. Agglomerations, Turnarounds and Recessions.- 12. Endogenous rerouting and longevity in Systemic organizations of production.- 13. Natural disasters and firm resilience in Italian Industrial Districts.- 14. Coping with economic crises: cluster associations and firm performance in the Basque Country.- 15. Italian Industrial Districts and the 2008 Recession.- 16. Industrial districts/clusters and smart specialisation policies.