• Page 15, lines 22-23: ‘Large firms are on the whole not active in clusters’ – As a general statement, this is certainly not true.
the conceptual framework appears simplistic, technocratic and static, and it is not sufficiently rooted in literature as evident from the scarcity of references in section 2.2. It is simplistic and technocratic because it views cluster performance as an outcome of initial conditions (i.e., the state of cluster development), cluster management and national polices. The paper thus rests on the untested presumption that cluster management and national policies actually impact the performance of clusters. As scholars, the authors should challenge this technocratic faith of policy-makers and practitioners, although evaluation is beyond this paper’s scope.