The question of how new regional growth paths emerge has been raised by many leading economic geographers. From an evolutionary perspective, there are strong reasons to believe that regions are most ...likely to branch into industries that are technologically related to the preexisting industries in the regions. Using a new indicator of technological relatedness between manufacturing industries, we analyzed the economic evolution of 70 Swedish regions from 1969 to 2002 with detailed plant-level data. Our analyses show that the long-term evolution of the economic landscape in Sweden is subject to strong path dependencies. Industries that were technologically related to the preexisting industries in a region had a higher probability of entering that region than did industries that were technologically unrelated to the region's preexisting industries. These industries had a higher probability of exiting that region. Moreover, the industrial profiles of Swedish regions showed a high degree of technological cohesion. Despite substantial structural change, this cohesion was persistent over time. Our methodology also proved useful when we focused on the economic evolution of one particular region. Our analysis indicates that the Linköping region increased its industrial cohesion over 30 years because of the entry of industries that were closely related to its regional portfolio and the exit of industries that were technologically peripheral. In summary, we found systematic evidence that the rise and fall of industries is strongly conditioned by industrial relatedness at the regional level.
Industrial Symbiosis (IS) is a collective approach to competitive advantage in which separate industries create a cooperative network to exchange materials, energy, water and/or by-products. By ...addressing issues related to resource depletion, waste management and pollution, IS plays an important role in the transition towards sustainable development. In the literature, two conceptual perspectives on IS can be identified: the Industrial Ecology (IE) and the Circular Economy (CE) perspective. Despite the recognition of these two perspectives, their relationship remains unclear and explicit attempts to develop an integrated perspective have not been made yet. Consequently, the goal of this research is to highlight and start addressing this critical gap of knowledge in order to support future research and practice geared towards the design of new IS clusters. We pose the following research question: How can the IE and CE perspectives on IS be combined in order to support the design of IS clusters? To this end, we first investigate the two perspectives more in depth and compare them in terms of nature, features and relevance for the study of IS. This is done by applying them as conceptual lenses for the analysis of the same case study, an existing IS cluster. The comparative analysis provides insights into how the two perspectives differ, ultimately demonstrating that they are complimentary and both necessary to fully describe an IS cluster. While the CE perspective is more suitable to explain how a cluster functions from a business standpoint in the operating phase, the IE perspective is more suitable to explain its development over time and its impacts on the environment, the economy and society. Building upon the outcomes of the comparative analysis, we leverage on the discipline of Strategic Design and integrate the two perspectives into a process for designing new IS clusters. We suggest two directions for future research. First, improving our comparative analysis of the two perspectives by looking at a wider sample of IS clusters of different sizes and in different contexts. Second, focusing with more specificity on the issue of how IS clusters can be designed, potentially by trying to apply the process we propose on a real case aimed at designing a new IS cluster.
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•Industrial Symbiosis is studied from two perspectives: Circular Economy and Industrial Ecology.•We analyze the two perspectives and find they are both necessary to define Industrial Symbiosis clusters.•We combine these two complimentary perspectives into an integrated process to design new Industrial Symbiosis Clusters.
•Explore the link between agency and actors in regional industrial path development.•Analyzes the transition towards bioeconomy in the Swedish region Värmland.•Emphasizes the role of structural ...maintenance agency and fringe agents.
Despite significant interest in regional industrial restructuring in economic geography, surprisingly, scarce attention has been paid to the changing role of agency over time. The current paper develops a framework for understanding the role of multiple types of actors and the agency they exercise for regional industrial path development. The framework is employed in a longitudinal study of industry development in Värmland, Sweden, from forestry towards a bio-economy. The analysis highlights how actors exercise very different types of agency in different periods of regional industrial path development.
•Develops a novel analytical framework for transformative innovation policy / innovation policy 3.0.•Unpacks notions of directionality, experimentation, demand articulation & policy ...coordination/learning in innovation systems.•Provides empirical insights on strategic innovation programmes in Sweden.
The orientation towards grand societal challenges can be seen as a new wave or paradigm for innovation policy. Such policy aims at system-wide transformation and is often referred to as system innovation policy. While insights from transition studies have provided novel and useful rationales for innovation policy targeting system-wide transformation, it remains unclear how to design, implement and evaluate such policies. The contribution of this paper is to translate and concretize the challenges of system innovation policy towards scope for policy action and analysis. Building on insights from transition studies we group the challenges into four domains: directionality, experimentation, demand articulation, and policy coordination and learning. We relate challenges within the four domains to three generic features of innovation systems: interests and capabilities of actors, networks, and institutions. The derived framework is applied in a case study on the strategic innovation programmes, a recent policy initiative by Vinnova, Sweden’s Innovation Agency, targeting system innovation.
•Introduces evolutionary economic geography to tourism scholars.•Highlights research synergies of evolutionary economic geography and tourism studies.•Illustrates the potential complementarities by ...comparing the models of Butler and Martin.•Critically appraises evolutionary approaches to studies of the tourism economy.•Calls for empirical testing of evolutionary economic geography within tourism studies.
Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG) is receiving increasing interest from tourism scholars. EEG has proven to be a useful explanatory paradigm in other sectors, e.g., high-technology and creative sectors. There remains, however, a lack of theoretical discussion on evolutionary principles of economic change within relatively low-technology service sectors, of which tourism is a prime example. This paper introduces EEG to a wider tourism audience by presenting the core principles of EEG and how they relate to tourism studies. A selection of new research paths combining EEG and tourism studies is highlighted together with a number of latent research synergies which can progress both EEG and tourism studies. The paper calls for further empirical and conceptual engagement with EEG by tourism scholars.
At the regional level, the imperative of sustainable development often manifests itself in an emphasis on developing green industries. However, regions vary in their preconditions for achieving this. ...In this paper we link regional preconditions to various pathways for green industry development. This provides the foundation for identifying place-based policy implications for growing green industries in different types of regions, grounded in the emerging perspective in innovation studies on transformative innovation policy. The paper thereby helps to understand the pathways for greening the economy in different regional contexts and how such green pathways can be promoted through policy.
In 2000, China agreed to share with African countries its experience in the field of investment promotion relating to the establishment and management of special economic zones. The Eastern Industry ...Zone was subsequently established. Of the various zones being built in Africa, Ethiopia's perhaps represents one of the biggest challenges to both the Chinese developers and the host government alike. Utilising insights from evolutionary economic geography and the work of Albert Hirschman, this article seeks to analyse the progress thus far in the Ethiopian SEZ. Spatially discrete, unfocused in terms of clustering and with few linkages to the wider economy, what impact, if any, the development of this zone will have on Ethiopia's structural transformation is discussed. The implications for Ethiopia's wider investment in industrial parks as part of its developmental state project is also drawn out.
The recent debate on innovation-based structural change in Evolutionary Economic Geography is characterised by a strong focus on the rise of new industrial paths. This paper seeks to shift attention ...and cast light on radical innovation activities occurring within existing paths without necessarily leading to their dissolution. Departing from a systemic perspective of path development we propose a stage model of path transformation. We outline how radical change becomes initiated, reinforced and finally consolidated in established industrial paths. Particular attention is devoted to the ways in which actors - influenced by 'the past' and driven by visions and expectations (that is, 'the future') - exert agency to stimulate asset modification processes that are assumed to underpin path transformation and the reconfiguration of the wider support structures. The framework is applied to the analysis of the automotive industry in West Sweden, which is currently transforming towards the development of self-driving cars.
While the global rush to control land resources is well established, 'power-grabs' in relation to marine and coastal resources are less well researched. Under the banner of 'blue growth', such ...power-grabs are taking shape through global policy processes that purportedly align the needs of the poor with profit interests and climate change concerns. This contribution critically interrogates these policy proposals and situates them within broader neoliberalization of nature debates. It is argued that the policy proposals fail on their own terms and are a form of 'antipolitics' that precludes more radical visions of addressing environmental and climate change issues. In an attempt to challenge this, small-scale fishers' movements are increasingly framing their opposition in terms of the broader struggle for 'food sovereignty'.
The Geography of Complex Knowledge Balland, Pierre-Alexandre; Rigby, David
Economic geography,
20/1/1/, Volume:
93, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
There is consensus among scholars and policy makers that knowledge is one of the key drivers of long-run economic growth. It is also clear from the literature that not all knowledge has the same ...value. However, too often in economic geography and cognate fields we have been obsessed with counting knowledge inputs and outputs rather than assessing the quality of knowledge produced. In this article we measure the complexity of knowledge, we map the distribution and the evolution of knowledge complexity in US cities, and we explore how the spatial diffusion of knowledge is linked to complexity. Our knowledge complexity index rests on the bimodal network models of Hidalgo and Hausmann. Analysis is based on more than two million patent records from the US Patent and Trademark Office that identify the technological structure of US metropolitan areas in terms of the patent classes in which they are most active between 1975 and 2010. We find that knowledge complexity is unevenly distributed across the United States and that cities with the most complex technological structures are not necessarily those with the highest rates of patenting. Citation data indicate that more complex patents are less likely to be cited than less complex patents when citing and cited patents are located in different metropolitan areas.
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