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relationship to human agency in the evolution of clusters. Drawing on those parts of
evolutionary theory that consider knowledge a process and outcome of social construc-
tion is in keeping with the emphasis in the cluster literature on knowledge as a core
asset (Tallman et al., 2004) and on learning as a key process of clusters (Malmberg and
Maskell, 2002). Although it would seem that the ideas underlying knowledge are central
to any knowledge-based and learning-based approach to clusters, ideas and the interac-
tions between them have been largely absent from most accounts of clusters, including
those emphasizing interpersonal relations at the micro-level (Sunley, 2008, p. 10). The
evolutionary framework suggested here focuses on ideas as the unit of selection, the
dynamic variation of populations of ideas, and the mechanisms by which ideas travel
across time and space.
The interest in ideas and agency complements the insights from other evolutionary
perspectives, such as complexity theory and population ecology. Scholars working from
these perspectives have tended to relegate the human actor to a residual category and
to describe the dif usion of ideas as a simple contagion process. This is problematic if
it condemns us to sterility of theorizing. We need to know, for example, what kind of
information l ows through networks before we can say how much learning has taken
place or what the purposes of learning are for the actors involved. Knowledge and ideas
are central to understanding human agency - intentional and nonintentional - in the
social sciences. At its best, the social-evolutionary approach proposed here provides a
framework for understanding how ideas are implicated in the general Darwinian proc-
esses of variation, selection, and retention that underlie human behavior. Although this
view draws on basic principles from evolutionary biology, it decidedly does not involve
biological reductionism (Campbell, 1965; Dennett, 1995; Hodgson, 2007; Richerson and
Boyd, 2005). It places individuals within a i eld of social relationships that is continually
reconstituted through actions. Agency is revealed in the
constitution
of meaning as a cog-
nitive achievement as well as the
construction
of meaning as a social achievement.
I begin this chapter with a brief outline of how dif erent variants of evolutionary
theory have addressed some of the central concerns in cluster 'theory'. I then discuss the
basic components of the social-evolutionary perspective. My main conclusion is that
evolutionary research on clusters is thriving, but it would benei t from a more systematic
concern for idea-based processes and social-constructionist mechanisms linking actors
and actions across levels of analysis.
2. Variants of evolutionary thinking
As a central place for the creation and reproduction of organizational forms (Hannan
et al., 2007), behavioral routines (Nelson and Winter, 1982), technologies (Rigby and
Essletzbichler, 1997), and intangible assets (DiTommaso et al., 2004) such as trust
(Lorenzen, 2002) and identity (Romanelli and Khessina, 2005), clusters are situated at
the interface of a multitude of forces and levels of action. These include the accumulated
interpretations of competencies carried by cluster actors, the competitive and institu-
tional rules in the community, and the dif erential reproduction of strategic options.
The organizational forms of clusters develop in a continuous process of adaptation to
environmental conditions that co-evolve in response to adaptation behaviors, sometimes
by design and sometimes by chance, and often with unpredictable outcomes. The success
of cluster i rms and the cluster as a whole depends, from an evolutionary perspective, on
