关键词: 创业企业, 产业集群, 空间演化, 软件产业, 广州

Abstract:

Location is one of the most important ways for firms to accumulate resources, making locational choice the fundamental strategy of firm development. Using the case of Guangzhou software industry cluster and the research method of in-depth interviews, the paper analyzes the influence of start-ups’ locational choice on the spatial evolution of industrial cluster. The result shows the restructuring of industrial paradigm, including the technological and market ones, leads to the transformation of spatial change in the industrial cluster, and it proposes the argument that start-ups create space in the sense that it is able to extend the spatial boundary and shape spatial morphology of the industrial clusters. The first generation of software start-ups agglomerate in the place where there are abundant resources released from the declining state-owned sector and supportive policy environment. The start-ups have gradually build up the relational networks and identity on cluster reputation, leading to the formation of the spatial core of the Guangzhou software industry cluster. Nevertheless, the technological change and market transformation could alter the locational preferences of the start-ups and thus dampens the locational advantage of the pre-existing cores. The second generation of start-ups, established in the wave of rapidly-developed mobile internet and newly-emerged internet plus era, take more efforts in discovering niche market by diversifying into and integrating with other industries in order to avoid direct competition with mature firms in saturated software market. The new generation of start-ups are then able to break through the boundary of the spatial core of the industrial cluster and reduces the disadvantages of dislocating from the cores to a great extent by efficiently combing technological and market innovation. The research has contributed to the understanding on the spatial processes of new economic phenomenon, in this case the start-ups, and thus the broad debate in the evolutionary economic geography on the role of space in times of new technology development and new industry paradigm shift. Finally, the policy implication has been given, suggesting that local governments could intervene in nurturing new growth space for industrial clusters in particular when industry restructuring occurs.

Key words: start-up firms, industrial cluster, spatial evolution, software industry, Guangzhou