Maybe “intellectual cluster” is a specific jargon in the Japanese policy. Following your suggestion, and according to the EU reports we cited in our manuscript, we deleted the adjective “intellectual” for clusters and just use “clusters”, because it does neither affect our concept nor findings.
The authors focus on what they call ‘intellectual clusters’, a term that appears 21 times throughout the paper although I cannot recall having ever seen it in a decade or so of studying clusters and cluster policies. According to the definition on the top of page 4, the term denotes a cluster led by a public research organisation, which is rather specific and I doubt it applies to the six case studies outlined in the paper. Even so, the term ‘intellectual’ does not look fully appropriate here, which may be due to its translation from a Japanese original. ‘Public research-led cluster’ might be more to the point, as it appears difficult to judge if these are more or less ‘intellectual’ than other forms of clusters. At the least, it would appear sound to qualify these six cases as science-based clusters, but then this would apply to the biotech industry and all its clusters in general.