Hubs and nodes is a geographic model explaining how linked regions can cooperate to fulfill elements of an industry's value chain and collectively gain sufficient mass to drive innovation growth.
As barriers to long-distance national and global transactions have fallen through advances in technology and logistics, such as the growth of the Internet and overnight package services, it has become increasingly possible to relocate operations such as research, product development, and manufacturing to countries and regions with relevant expertise and lower costs.
It is common among consumer goods, for example, to have concept generation centered in one locale, product testing and refinement in another, and manufacturing and distribution in still others.
As more companies progress beyond the cluster model, they increasingly expand and diversify their operations to locations where their investments will be most profitable.
For companies adequately prepared for the rapid globalization process, their research and development, manufacturing, and distribution stages fare better as these businesses can reduce their costs and potentially realize new efficiencies, and increased speeds of product development.