The development of the electrical industry in Wenzhou is a sound research area for its size, industrial cluster, culture, globalization history, collaboration traditional in business, and political preferences. ‘Grouping' is a special atmosphere of collaboration in Wenzhou business model quite different from the atmosphere of competition in other industries. Wenzhou electrical industry cluster is challenged by several uncertainties in its rapid development. A brief analysis of SWOT will give a clear picture. The study of the lifecycle analysis of industrial cluster as well as their relationship with the collaboration performance and competitiveness helps the understanding of the unique values of the research in Wenzhou area.
TopThe Famous Wenzhou Collaboration Culture
Culture is the enduring behaviours, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next (Myers, 2006). From the late of 1980s, ‘Wenzhou model’ is well known throughout the country, causing widespread concerns by business and academic world in China (ZNNES, 2010). Wenzhou mode refers to the pattern of developing big market by small commodities created by the southeast of Zhejiang Wenzhou area, which is the result of family factories and professional development of marketplace (ZPPGRC, 2005; YCLCC, 2009; ZNNES, 2010; Pan, 2013). These small commodities mean these products have low production scale, technical content and transport costs. Large market refers to the sales networks and professional markets established by Wenzhou enterprisers in China and worldwide. As concluded by Duan, Xing and Wang (2013), the ‘realistic and pragmatic spirits’, ‘trust and harmonious philosophy’, and ‘open and diligence attitude’ are the three essential composing inside people’s value in this area.
Especially after the Chinese reform and openness policy in 1984, Wenzhou entrepreneurs gradually realized the value of collaboration in the industry. In despite of collaborating or competing, Wenzhou entrepreneurs prefer the word of ‘grouping’ (Ren, 2011). When a person from the group found a new market opportunity anywhere in the world, he would send back a six-word message to his friends from the group in Wenzhou, said ‘big markets, few people, come quickly!’ It was a funny story, but explained the major reason that why Wenzhou is fully packed with entrepreneurs. Normally, they centralized on similar products, and consequently, one after one specialized market mall or street is built up.