SME WORLD Bureau
Apr 2010

1.  Cluster
A business cluster is a geographic concentration of interconnected businesses, suppliers, and associated institutions in a particular field. Clusters are considered to increase the productivity with which companies can compete, nationally and globally.
Governments and companies often try to use the cluster effect to promote a particular place as good for a certain type of business. For example, the city of Bangalore, India has utilized the cluster effect in order to convince a number of high-tech companies to setup shop there.

This term industry cluster, also known as a business cluster, competitive cluster can be classified in four forms, i.e.
„h The geographical cluster - as stated above
„h Sectoral clusters (a cluster of businesses operating together from within the same commercial sector e.g. marine (south east England; Cowes and now Solent) and photonics (Aston Science Park, Birmingham))
„h Horizontal cluster (interconnections between businesses at a sharing of resources level e.g. knowledge management)
„h Vertical cluster (i.e. a supply chain cluster)

Objectives
Michael Porter claims that clusters have the potential to affect competition in three ways:
„h by increasing the productivity of the companies in the cluster,
„h by driving innovation in the field
„h by stimulating new businesses in the field

Types
On the basis of knowledge, generally three types of business clusters.
„h Techno clusters - These clusters are high technology-oriented, well adapted to the knowledge economy, and typically have as a core renowned universities and research centers like Silicon Valley.
„h Historic knowhow-based clusters - These are based on more traditional activities that maintain their advantage in know-how over the years, and for some of them, over the centuries. They are often industry specific. For example: London as financial center.
„h Factor Endowment clusters - They are created because a comparative advantage they might have linked to a geographical position. For example, wine production clusters because of sunny regions surrounded by mountains, where good grapes can grow. This is like certain areas in France, Spain, Chile or California.

Process
The process of identifying, defining, and describing a cluster is not standardized. Individual economic consultants and researchers develop their own methodologies. All cluster analysis relies on evaluation of local and regional employment patterns, based on industrial categorizations such as NAICS or the increasingly obsolete SIC codes.
An alternative to clusters, reflecting the distributed nature of business operations in the wake of globalization is Hubs and Nodes.

The Silicon Valley case
In the mid- to late 1990s, several successful computer technology related companies emerged in Silicon Valley in California. This led anyone who wished to create a startup company to do so in Silicon Valley. The surge in the number of Silicon Valley startups led to a number of venture capital firms relocating to or expanding their Valley offices. This in turn encouraged more entrepreneurs to locate their startups there.

In other words, venture capitalists (sellers of finance) and dot-com startups (buyers of finance) "clustered" in and around a geographical area.

2.  Dish TV
Dish TV is a DTH satellite television provider in India, using MPEG-2 digital compression technology, transmitting using NSS Satellite at 95.0. Dish Tv's managing director and Head Of Business is Jawahar Goel who is also the promoter of Essel Group and is also the President of Indian Broadcasting Foundation.[1]

History
DTH service was launched back in 2004 by launching of Dish TV by Essel Group's Zee Entertainment Enterprises. Dish TV is on the same satellite where DD Direct+ is. Dish TV started its service in Pakistan with the collaboration of Budget Communication.
Dish TV was only DTH operator in India to carry the two Turner channels Turner Classic Movies and Boomerang. Both the channels were removed from the platform due to unknown reasons in March 2009.

Satellite link
Dish TV uses NSS-6 to broadcast its programmes. NSS-6 was launched on 17 December, 2002 by European-based satellite provider, NewSkies. Dish TV hopped on to NSS-6 from an INSAT satellite in July 2004. The change in the satellite was to increase the channel offering as NSS 6 offered more transponder capacity.

Availability
Dish TV is available across the country and adjacent countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Gulf Countries, & Pakistan.

3.  Intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a term referring to a number of distinct types of legal monopolies over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets in some jurisdictions.

Objectives
Financial incentive
These exclusive rights allow owners of intellectual property to reap monopoly profits. These monopoly profits provide a financial incentive for the creation of intellectual property, and, in case of patents, pay associated research and development costs.

Economics
Intellectual property rights are temporary state-enforced monopolies regarding use and expression of ideas and information.
Intellectual property rights are usually limited to non-rival goods, that is, goods which can be used or enjoyed by many people simultaneously—the use by one person does not exclude use by another. This is compared to rival goods, such as clothing, which may only be used by one person at a time. For example, any number of people may make use of a mathematical formula simultaneously. Some objections to the term intellectual property are based on the argument that property can only properly be applied to rival goods (or that one cannot own "property" of this sort).

Since a non-rival good may be simultaneously used (copied, for example) by many people (produced with minimal marginal cost), monopolies over distribution and use of works are meant to give producers incentive to create further works. The establishment of intellectual property rights, therefore, represents a trade-off, to balance the interest of society in the creation of non-rival goods (by encouraging their production) with the problems of monopoly power. Since the trade-off and the relevant benefits and costs to society will depend on many factors that may be specific to each product and society, the optimum period of time during which the temporary monopoly rights should exist is unclear.