Complete 9 pages APA formatted article: Work On Industrial Clusters by Michael Porters. According to Michael Porter, long-term competitive advantages in an economy that is considered global will be found in local things such as motivation, relationships, and knowledge that cannot be matched by distant competitors. Michael Porter’s work has shown that competitiveness can be enhanced in the modern and increasingly dynamic, knowledge-based and complex economy by clusters. This paper will discuss the main features of Michael Porter’s cluster model and the advantages it offers business and society. The cluster model is an economic phenomenon concept perceived from the context whereby many business organizations collaborate and compete simultaneously in order to realize various economic advantages. Porter defined clusters as geographically related concentrations of institutions and companies linked by a common area of interest. Within a cluster, the value chain will be extended downwards towards the customers and laterally towards the manufacturers of complementary products. Clusters can better be understood by being viewed as dynamic arrangements founded on the creation of knowledge, innovation and increasing returns rather than being considered as fixed flows of goods and services. The clusters will characteristically encompass arrays of linked fields in industry and the associated entities that determine competition (Wear 2008, p. 198). Examples of the associated entities include suppliers and providers of specialized inputs and services respectively. From this, the first key feature of Porter’s cluster model can be seen to be the suggestion that the future competitive advantage of a firm will not be the function of efficient sourcing of inputs. Rather, the competitive advantage will be determined by the firm’s capability to exploit and take full advantage of the resources that the local network of firms and individuals (or cluster) that they&nbsp.operate in provides.