Coevolution of cultural embeddedness and industrial cluster's development: Case study of Shaoxing county textile cluster

As an important “soft environment” to industrial cluster's development, cultural embeddedness(CE) affects cluster's development by influencing the structure and behavior of cluster innovation system. From the dynamic perspective, there also exists coevolutionary process among these relationships. Based on longitudinal case study of the development of Shaoxing county textile cluster during the last three decades, we find this process leads to coupling in the early period of cluster's life cycle, but results in lock-in during the later phases. I.e the decline of clusters seems to be caused by the same factors that were advantages in the past. So we contend that it's important to make co-alignment and couple to cultural embeddedness and cluster's development in order to keep cluster's sustainable competitiveness.