Search

Industrial Clusters shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic of industrial clusters, with a particular focus on clustering in the UK, bringing together a chronological coverage of the phenomenon. This set of original essays by a group of leading business and industrial historians offers fresh perspectives about clusters and clustering. A primary emphasis of the collection is how knowledge is generated and disseminated across a cluster, and whether these processes stimulated innovation and consequently longer-term sustainability. This analysis also prompts questions about which unit of analysis to examine, from the entrepreneurs and firms they created through to the industry as a whole and district in which they are located, or whether one should look outside the region for explanatory factors. Covering regions as diverse as North Wales, the Scottish Highlands, the City of London, the Potteries, Sheffield and Lancashire, the essays have been channelled to provide a detailed understanding of these issues. The editors have also provided a challenging Conclusion that suggests a new research agenda that could well unravel some of the mysteries associated with clustering.This edited collection will be of interest to international researchers, academics and students in the fields of business and management history, innovation, industrialisation and clusters.

Major Penelope Baldwin, accomplished pilot and tactician, could have expected a bright future and stable military career until a dubious flight mission over Al A'Zamiyah, Iraq results in the loss of her left leg, and any opportunity for motherhood. As Penelope struggles in recovery, her mother Evelyn struggles to secure their financial future and cover mounting medical bills. Buying the lies of disingenuous bankers and marketing shills, Evelyn places her savings within the derivatives market, a bubble that (unbeknownst to her) is on the verge of bursting. The collapse will destroy what's left of her finances, along with the investments and pensions of countless citizens. Within months, on a wintry night in Georgia, a coked-up stock trader miscalculates a power turn in a Porsche coupe, sending its right front wheel over the curb and crashing into that which Penelope holds most dear. The stage is set for a dedicated warrior, an American heroine, to turn her sights on those greedy, callous men responsible for ripping away her future. Baldwin, along with Tessa Montgomery (Senior Chief USMC), Cynthia Washington (RN MSW), and six other highly competent women, all similarly devastated by the avarice, arrogance, and indifference of America's ruling elite, channel their grief and rage, and their search for justice, to become a finely orchestrated and well-financed band of predators. Several months later, several of the most powerful of America's financial and political elite are slaughtered in forty-storied monuments to their egos. Then a terror―a terror so primal that it rends the very fabric of everyday life―is released into the homes, limos, and private jets of America's quasi-monarchical class. An invisible society of professional predators is leading a lethal attack on the long sacred relationship between money and politics. Two critical questions are explicitly raised by the attackers: When the voice of the few, the wealthy, the privileged is the sound of the money essential for election, can the voice of the common citizen be heard at all? Can an ethical government exist when the special interests it's charged with policing have captured the political system and the means of election through their vast wealth? How will the country's people, political leaders, and top business executives respond? Find out by reading Aftershock, a heart-thumping fictional thriller by debut novelist Joe Lane.

Shackleton Speed steals the reconnaissance camera from the remains of a WWII Spitfire he had unearthed with his metal detector. Now two friends are dead and their killers were after him. The connection is the developed photographs from the old celluloid film. They show the I-52, a Japanese submarine, somewhere off the British coast when history records the I-52 was sunk in the Atlantic while carrying gold to the Third Reich. Speed sets out for revenge and to expose those responsible. The trail leads him to Southern Ireland and Roaring Water Bay where he uncovers the hidden horrors of WWII.