Clusters, Transnational Entrepreneurs and the Emergence of New Global Production Patterns. The Palanpuris and the Reorganization of Diamond Manufacturing

For a few years now, the concept of transnational entrepreneurship (TE) has gained in importance in social sciences. It focuses on individuals having migrated from one country to another, thereby maintaining business-related linkages with their home countries. These transnational entrepre-neurs are said to maximize their resource bases by engaging simultaneously in two or more so-cially embedded environments. Though the concept explicitly refers to cross-border activities of mostly smaller sized enterprises, it has not found its way into the debate on the change of spatial production patterns so far. One reason for the disregard of the approach is that TE-studies up to now clearly have adopted a micro perspective which has not accounted for regional aspects. The paper aims at closing this research gap. Using the example of diamond manufacturing, it will show that transnational entrepreneurs are able to significantly contribute to the change of tradi-tionally grown regional production patterns and therefore asks for a deeper consideration of these actors in future research on globalization issues.