UNDERLYING LOGICS THAT TRANSFORM SURVIVAL OR SUBSISTENT ENTREPRENEURSHIP CLUSTERS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Poor entrepreneurs in developing countries are trapped at subsistence level. This study attempts to understand how survival entrepreneurial clusters can evolve into innovative industrial networks. By conceptualizing survival entrepreneurship cluster evolution, this research focuses on alternative binary paths of either the advance or decline at each juncture of cluster evolutionary trajectory and identifies factors that determine evolution direction. The conceptual model is further developed as it applied to a cluster case in China. This study suggests which mechanisms and factors allow a cluster to adapt, to avoid stagnation, decline, or death, and to rejuvenate at each transformational juncture.