2023 年 53 巻 1 号 p. 1-17
Developing industrial clusters, found by Saxenian and conceptualized by Porter, is still an attractive way to revitalize regional economies and communities, even though some criticism has been expressed concerning specific targets or industrial and technological categories set artificially. Following global movements, the Japanese national government has implemented cluster initiatives since the 2000s. However, several studies that dealt with failures of cluster development activities have been reported and a lack of leadership or mismatching between the targets and regional, social and technological resources as factors. Responding to rapid growth in the global market many regions including the national ministries started industrial cluster development targeting aerospace parts manufacturing in anticipation of the high-tech Aerospace Industry’s high value-added, high growth potential, and large spillover effects on other industries both economically and technologically. However, in the real environment, the business condition is not easy at all and is far different from these expectations, especially for the new small- and medium-sized entrants to the market. Quality management is strictly and highly required, absolute market size is far smaller than the automobile industries, cost-cut pressure from the Original Equipment Manufacturers is too strong, etc. As of today at the beginning of the 2020s, the author cannot find successful aerospace industrial clusters with very few exceptions in Japan. Therefore, some important questions must also be asked. Were these difficulties and uncertainties discussed among all stakeholders in each region? Did they agree to the policy proposals to be implemented in the region and understand the negative side effects well enough? Was a stiff consensus formed to allocate limited regional resources to a particular industrial category?
To clarify these questions, considering the Niigata Sky Project as a case comparing a similar activity implemented in Iida City, this study adopted partly participatory research and carried out specific interviews with company presidents, members of city councils, municipal employees, and individual persons. At the same time, statistical data and the records of city councils were compiled and quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. Especially to analyze long term and large amounts of council records, the topic modeling method was applied, which was confirmed to be well fit for the qualitative analysis carried out by the author.
Finally, the research results, both qualitatively and quantitatively using a text-mining technique, showed the existence of unignorable possibilities in the lack of consensus formation in the region making efforts to form cutting-edge industrial clusters appear stagnant. Consequently, the author concluded that consensus forming with not only leadership but building a thick followership layer based on the objective data including negative factors is essential for tackling the challenges.
JEL Classifications:O22, L52, L62, Z18
