The Resilience of Clusters in the Context of Increasing Globalization: The Basque Wind Energy Value Chain

In this paper, we study how globalization impacts on the structure and governance patterns of value chains and on the resilience of local clusters. We study the value chains related to two Basque (Spain) companies in the wind energy industry, Iberdrola and Gamesa, and the local cluster to which they belong. We find that firms within the cluster have different types of relationships with lead companies depending on their competences and the complexity of their products. As a consequence, firms also present different potential for growth and/or resilience: some have the capacity to internationalize their operations and/or shift to the offshore wind market, others are vulnerable to competition from providers in the emerging countries. Against this context, we discuss how the cluster responds to these challenges and the role of policy.