International Trade Fairs and Global Buzz. Part II: Practices of Global Buzz

International trade fairs bring together agents from all over the world for a limited time period. They create a dense ecology of communication and information flows, referred to as “global buzz”. Global buzz associated with face-to-face (F2F) communication is extremely important for agents participating in these events as it generates access to developments occurring in different parts of the world. It helps to maintain and intensify existing networks, establish new networks or “trans-local pipelines” and support the development of shared attitudes and understandings. This paper aims to provide empirical evidence about the significance of global buzz in its manifold forms. Our research emphasizes the benefits that result from four sets of closely interrelated practices: (i) global knowledge exchange based on F2F interaction, (ii) exploration of market trends, (iii) problem solving and idea generation and (iv) network generation and pipeline-building in interpretative communities. The paper argues that practices of acquiring information, networking and dealing with competition differ substantially according to industry, firm and product characteristics. Our analysis of global buzz practices draws from more than 460 semi-structured interviews, which were conducted between 2004 and 2006 at seven national and international trade fairs in Frankfurt/Main, Hannover and Nürnberg, Germany.     

Trade Fairs as an Export Marketing and Research Strategy: Results from a Study of Korean Advanced Machinery Firms

Manufacturers pursuing information on potential customers in distant, dynamic markets confront myriad obstacles. To address this, many firms attend international trade fairs in order to market their products, to meet with prospective customers, and to tap into buzz related to potential international opportunities. In many ways, moreover, such exhibitions can serve as short‐term agglomerations of same‐industry activity, particularly important for producer–user interface geared towards innovation. The goal of this paper is to explore how Korean machine tool manufacturers utilise a major global trade show in Seoul to minimise the difficulties associated with accessing a global customer base, inclusive of their activity at this show geared towards innovation. Evidence from firm‐level surveys and interviews suggest that the amount of importance placed on trade fair attendance as part of a firm's internationalisation strategies is related to export growth. Additionally, a new insight generated is that firms that participate in trade shows as part of their innovation process also demonstrate higher rates of export intensity. Finally, we may be witnessing newly discovered, technology‐driven, symbiotic relationships between online portal sites, vendors, and potential customers at these trade fairs, where virtual services are nonetheless augmented by a need for a continued onsite presence at these exhibitions.     

The spatial economy of North American trade fairs

Through a study of trade fairs, this article illustrates that relational approaches to economic geography are not limited to the sphere of economic and social relationships. These relationships are influenced by and, in turn, shape material realities, such as specific infrastructure and the labour market, in a reflexive manner. Trade fairs are “relational events” that bring together regional, national, and often international producers, users, suppliers, and other agents of a value chain or technology field for the purpose of exchanging knowledge about technological and market developments, building partnerships, and maintaining existing networks through learning by interaction and observation. However, these events are also situated in space and time, grounded in the contexts of particular industries, trade patterns, public and private investments, as well as the economic geographies of places. Focusing on North America, this article presents and analyzes data on the economic geography of trade fairs and their regional economic impact (number of events, exhibitors, attendees, exhibition space). It explores regional trade fair patterns and dynamic changes in major trade fair cities by emphasizing the role of history and industry context.     

Geographies of temporary markets: an anatomy of the Canton Fair

While recent research on temporary clusters and temporary markets has emphasized the knowledge generation processes associated with trade fairs, little is known about the knowledge exchanges that are embedded in market relations at these events. This paper uses the case of the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, the largest trade fair in China, to illustrate that such events do not operate as a single market, but that they generate multiple dynamic market configurations, which entail different flows of knowledge, goods and people. In a typical case study, four types of market configurations are identified that simultaneously develop at this event. The findings contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of market relations, knowledge and transactions in temporary spatial settings.     

Building global knowledge pipelines: The role of temporary clusters

Business people and professionals come together regularly at trade fairs, exhibitions, conventions, congresses, and conferences. Here, their latest and most advanced findings, inventions and products are on display to be evaluated by customers and suppliers, as well as by peers and competitors. Participation in events like these helps firms to identify the current market frontier, take stock of relative competitive positions and form future plans. Such events exhibit many of the characteristics ascribed to permanent spatial clusters, albeit in a temporary and intensified form. These short-lived hotspots of intense knowledge exchange, network building and idea generation can thus be seen as temporary clusters. This paper compares temporary clusters with permanent clusters and other types of inter-firm interactions. If regular participation in temporary clusters can satisfy a firm's need to learn through interaction with suppliers, customers, peers and rivals, why is the phenomenon of permanent spatial clustering of similar and related economic activity so pervasive? The answer, it is claimed, lies in the restrictions imposed upon economic activity when knowledge and ideas are transformed into valuable products and services. The paper sheds new light on how interaction among firms in current clusters coincides with knowledge-intensive pipelines between firms in different regions or clusters. In doing so, it offers a novel way of understanding how inter-firm knowledge relationships are organized spatially and temporally.     

Local Firms and Global Reach: Business Air Travel and the Irish Software Cluster

We study the external linkages of clusters through a typology of forms of temporary proximity (from foreign business meetings to co-located projects). We suggest that here business air travel and information and communication technologies have given significant advantages to small firms. We investigate these arguments through a case study of the Irish software industry in Dublin. Comparing indigenous and multinational corporation (MNC) firms confirms that indigenous firms are as travel intensive as MNCs but are linked to fewer destinations. We conclude that air travel enables small firms to go global without the support of collective cluster institutions.     

Buzz,Archipelago Economies and the Future of Intermediate and Peripheral Areas in a Spiky World

In a world where large urban agglomerations are increasingly regarded by scholars and policy-makers alike as the engines of economic development, the options at the disposal of intermediate and peripheral areas are dwindling. Doing nothing is, according to the dominating theories, likely to result in a steady decline which may jeopardize their very economic viability. Adopting active measures is thus the way forward. In this paper, we argue that the main solution being proposed—interactive learning through the promotion of local agglomeration (buzz option)—may yield limited results, if at all, as it would stifle the circulation of new knowledge and lead to lock-in. By contrast, promoting interaction outside the comfort zone of geographical, cognitive, social and institutional proximity (pipeline option) is more likely to succeed in generating interactive learning and in facilitating the generation, diffusion and absorption of innovation. We illustrate this point by resorting to the case of firm innovation in Norwegian city regions.     

Resituating Proximity and Knowledge Cross-fertilization in Clusters by Means of International Trade Fairs

This paper elaborates a proximity framework and provides empirical evidence of how knowledge cross-fertilization is instigated at international trade fairs (ITFs) and continued in a cluster network. This paper applies a case study method relying on social network analysis to explore the knowledge cross-fertilization initiated at ITFs and furthered at a Swedish cluster. The findings suggest that firms participating at ITFs translate and re-articulate the acquired external knowledge through their interactions in the cluster network. Creating awareness of the ITFs' influence on innovation is significant for policy-makers and scholars.     

‘A Shop Window Where You Can Choose the Goods You Like’

This article examines the Finnish industrial and trade fairs held in the Soviet Union in the context of Finnish–Soviet trade and scientific–technical cooperation in the 1950s and 1960s. While primarily focused on fairs, it also discusses different activities that accompanied them, such as lectures, visits, and negotiations between Finnish traders and Soviet officials and specialists. This study illustrates how such first-hand contact played an important role in Finnish–Soviet communications. First, they helped Finnish producers showcase their goods and technologies directly to Soviet buyers in various ministries and organizations. Second, these contacts included diverse activities such as face-to-face contacts, lectures, and seminars, being a means of technology transfer from Finland to the USSR . Finally, although they were commercial interactions without explicit ideological purposes – like many international exhibitions of the last century – Finnish fairs demonstrated a technological gap between Finland and the USSR.     

External Ties and the Reduction of Knowledge Asymmetries among Clusters within Global Value Chains: The Case of the Ceramic Tile District of Castellon

Classical industrial districts' literature is not focused on the role played by external ties but gives more importance to the local districts' endogenous development. Global value chains connect clusters to other external agents through external linkages and constitute a framework to analyse the complex inter-linkages between clusters and other external agents. In the field of the external ties and the global value chain approach Academia is primarily focused on the ties which link clusters in developing nations to global markets, although global value chains also consider connections between clusters in similar activities and even when both are located in developed nations. Thus, external linkages are mainly performed by multinational enterprise (MNE) affiliates which play fundamental role of knowledge diffusers and absorbers in the process of knowledge exchange throughout global value chains. The work examines the process of knowledge exchange between clusters through external ties using the global value chain approach. For this purpose, empirical work is conducted with 22 face-to-face interviews to provide a case study about a leading cluster in the global ceramic tile industry. Results show that the basic knowledge to successfully compete is locally originated, although it can be complemented with global knowledge learnt or generated in other territories. MNE affiliates bridge structural holes through external ties and reduce knowledge asymmetries within global value chains. External ties on network-based governance chains exist, matter and affect clusters allowing upgrading even between developed nations.     

Combining Knowledge from Different Sources,Channels and Geographical Scales

The aim of this article is to examine conceptually and empirically how innovative firms combine knowledge (1) provided by different sources, (2) accessed at different spatial scales and (3) acquired through different channels. We add to the conceptual debate by contrasting and synthesising the perspectives offered on these issues by four key concepts, namely the local buzz and global pipelines argument, the knowledge-base approach, the notions of Science–Technology–Innovation and Doing–Using–Interacting modes of innovation as well as the regional innovation systems concept. The empirical part of the article contains an analysis of knowledge-sourcing activities employed by 181 firms belonging to the Austrian automotive supplier industry. Our findings reveal that it is, indeed, combinations of knowledge sourced from different partners located at different spatial scales and acquired through different channels that are relevant. However, it is particular combinations that dominate while others are negligible. Austrian automotive supplier firms combine knowledge provided by customers with knowledge inputs from a variety of other sources. Most of the combinations involve the European or global levels combined with the regional and/or national level. Finally, firms combine spillovers with a variety of other channels to acquire innovation-relevant knowledge.     

Global Production Networks and Global Innovation Networks: Stability Versus Growth

This paper works with global production network (GPN) as compared to global innovation network (GIN) theory and focuses on the global information and communication technologies (ICT), specifically the hard disk drive (HDD) aspects of that system. In this respect it has a double distinction to examine: it concerns complex socio-economic and political governance processes focused upon innovation, argued by many to be the guiding principle of the construction of economic advantage in the contemporary era and it utilizes theory to capture important contrasts in the condition of key and changing building blocks in the global ICT industry. Methodologically, it is qualitative and necessarily so, based in this instance on much secondary information interpretation and some interviews. The larger project of which these findings are a small part had a balance of the two methods of inquiry. Empirically, the paper finds that GPN set-ups are not particularly innovation-inducing, tend to stabilizing over the long term and firm growth is largely by acquisition. The contemporary global ICT system is, by contrast, endogenously innovative, far from stable and has greater developmental potential because of its key GIN characteristic, which is its capacity for novelty.     

England’s trade with the Continent in the early thirteenth century: customs and the port of Dover

ABSTRACT

This article identifies and prints the earliest detailed customs list from northern Europe, which was prepared for the port of Dover in 1233 or soon after, and it gives fuller and more detailed information about trade than for any other northern European port at this date. The list shows a remarkable diversity of trade, including some of the earliest references to particular goods in English documents, and widespread sources of trade including Flanders, Germany and Italy. The depiction of such trading links prompts questions about the ‘commercial revolution’ and the development of European trade, for it shows how varied trade and consumption could be in the era of the fairs of the Champagne towns, before the establishment of direct maritime links from the Italian cities to northern Europe. The appearance of commodities and trading links in the Dover list suggest that commercial development was earlier and more evolutionary.     

The Global Economic Crisis and China's Foreign Trade

Two noted academic specialists on China's economic geography are joined by a research assistant to examine the impact of the current global economic crisis and recession on China's trade with the rest of the world. Relying on statistics collected by the country's customs administration through the first half of 2009, the authors identify and analyze trends in China's imports and exports (detailing countries of origin and destination) as well as balance of trade. They also develop and present an input-output model in order to gain a more precise understanding of the country's trade dependence (both before and during the crisis) than afforded by analyses based on conventional statistics, and explore some of the implications of the decline in trade on levels of domestic unemployment.     

Global commodity networks, ethical trade and governmentality: organizing business responsibility in the Kenyan cut flower industry

This paper engages critically with current ethical trading practice in the global cut flower trade, focusing on the specific case of Kenyan export production for European markets. Notions of governmentality are adopted in the analysis, in order to understand the rationalities and materialities that underpin the organizational geographies of business responsibility in this context, and serve to re-regulate the trading network. Mentalities of stakeholding and practices of auditing are shown to play prominent roles in this process. However, it is argued that regulatory contradictions associated with the audit economy place organizational limits on the effective practice of ethical trade.     

论广西近代圩市的变迁

随着广西近代商品经济的发展和社会性质的变化,广西近代圩市发生相应的变迁。就具体的圩市而言,广西近代圩市有兴有废,但总的趋势是兴多废少;从圩市贸易来看,广西近代圩市有盛有衰,但大部分圩市固定人口增加,商业目渐繁盛,圩市的交易圈也不断扩大;农村商品经济的发展,使可供交易的商品目益增多,从而使圩期逐步缩短。这些从一个侧面反映了广西近代经济的发展和变化。     

1976～1978年间的中国对外贸易

十一届三中全会前夕,在中共中央、国务院"对外贸易要有一个大的发展"的号召下,中国的对外贸易开始启动,中外贸易团体往来频繁,中国政府在完善原有对外贸易机构的同时,通过召开专题研讨会、派出国小组国外调研、定期举办商品交易会等方式,为发展对外贸易创造良好的条件。由此,1976～1978年间中国的进出口贸易发展迅速,并同世界上许多国家签订了一系列贸易协定。这是十一届三中全会上确定进一步发展对外贸易的基础,为后来中国对外贸易的发展创造了条件。     

Global firms in local information societies: Work and employment issues for Europe

The strategies of large firms have a major influence on the evolution of the global information society because they dominate the markets for information and communication technologies. This paper examines the user rather than the producer role of large firms, and focuses on the surrounding issues relating to evolving patterns of work and employment. Its discussion of these issues and their policy significance reflects the perspective of the EU on what is effectively a global agenda on the future of work in the information society.     

“You Cannot Trade What Is Not Yours”: Indigenous Governance and the NAFTA Negotiations

ABSTRACT

Contemporary International Relations scholars and practitioners generally recognize that substate governments affect the state’s international affairs; however, there is less acceptance of Indigenous governments as global actors that meaningfully impact the state. After all, the expectation would be that central governments, with considerably more resources and power, would be unlikely to face a challenge from an Indigenous government. However, Indigenous governments are negotiating new relationships with foreign and domestic governments, forming economic development corporations, hiring private firms to raise capital, funding trade missions, and even opening offices in key international locales such as Beijing to engage in trade promotion and push investment opportunities in projects such as resource extraction. Applying paradiplomacy theory, which argues that International Relations cannot be properly explained absent the global affairs of substate governments, this article analyzes the effect of Indigenous peoples and governance in the Canada–US trade relationship. It specifically considers how Indigenous engagement in the global economy affects the bilateral trade regime, foreign direct investment, and cross-border trade. The driver for these analysis centers on demands for the inclusion of a so-called “Indigenous chapter” in the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiations in 2017 and 2018.     

A trans-national machine on the world stage: representing McCormick's reaper through world's fairs, 1851–1902

The McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. displayed its harvesting machinery at world fairs and agricultural fairs, using these events to build respectability for its machines and in support of sales and advertising claims. Records of the company reveal the firm's competitive behaviour at these fairs and their associated field trials for agricultural machinery. Analysis of company advertisements, catalogues, and correspondence on fairs and field trials reveals the way McCormick used these events, the extent and nature of international competition, and the nature of the world stage for industrial competition. Cyrus Hall McCormick, founder of the company, learning from his Crystal Palace success of 1851 and his even earlier experience with fairs in the USA, represented his reaper as a global product, made in America and internationally successful. Indeed, at the fairs McCormick's machines were embroiled in internecine warfare among an international brotherhood of manufacturers in pursuit of common goals and using a common repertoire of tactics, if not identical machines. This is because ‘American harvesting machines’ were a trans-national phenomenon. The paper concludes that globalisation was occurring in harvesting machinery and suggests that problems emerge from considering international competition in this industry as a contest among distinct national economies.