Cluster evolution and the change of knowledge bases: the development of a design cluster

Most studies portray cluster knowledge bases as a given resource, tied to specific industries and locations. However, this paper challenges that view and uncovers their dynamic nature by identifying endogenous and exogenous triggering events that influence and change the cluster knowledge base mix over time. This is done by building on the theoretical concepts of pre-existing conditions, triggering events and knowledge bases and by drawing on a case study of the design cluster located in the Triangle Area of Denmark. The paper concludes that the design cluster has changed its mix of knowledge bases several times during its evolution. Starting out as a firm-driven cluster with a dominant synthetic knowledge base, it then evolved into an artistic and creative cluster with a prevailing symbolic knowledge base. In the last few years, the cluster has increasingly adopted an analytical knowledge base at the expense of other knowledge bases. These developments have caused numerous changes in both knowledge building and the sources of knowledge in and around the cluster. These findings have implications for the framing of cluster knowledge bases, considering how they emerge, change and combine, as well as how that affects clusters’ composition of actors, activities and resources.     

Does Combinatorial Knowledge Lead to a Better Innovation Performance of Firms?

The knowledge base concept in the past was often applied in its “pure form”, i.e. it was assumed that there are dominant knowledge bases in particular sectors and firms shaping knowledge and innovation processes and related networks. For “analytical sectors” such as biotech, it has been argued that codified knowledge generated by universities and R&D organizations is the key for innovation, whereas “synthetic sectors” such as machinery innovate more incrementally by recombining existing knowledge often drawn from suppliers or service firms. Empirical literature has partly confirmed these patters, but also shown more complex knowledge processes. More recently it has been argued that combinations of different knowledge bases might enhance the innovation performance of firms. For example in “analytical sectors”, firms might benefit not just from new and basic knowledge generated by research, but also from recombining existing and applied knowledge or by drawing on symbolic knowledge. Combinatorial knowledge bases might also be relevant for “synthetic” and “symbolic sectors”, but in different forms. This study investigates for the ICT sector in regions of Austria if the reliance on combinatorial knowledge leads to a better innovation performance than the use of more narrow knowledge bases.     

SPATIAL HETEROGENEITY IN KNOWLEDGE,INNOVATION, AND ECONOMIC GROWTH NEXUS: CONCEPTUAL REFLECTIONS AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

By drawing on the Schumpeterian distinction between invention (i.e., new ideas and knowledge creation) and commercialization of new ideas (i.e., innovation), this paper shows that knowledge and innovation are both important drivers of economic growth, but have heterogeneous spatial impacts. In particular, the growth benefits accruing from knowledge seem rather selective and concentrated across space whereas the growth benefits generated by innovation seem more diffusive, and regions innovating in the absence of a strong local knowledge base can be as successful as more knowledge‐intensive regions in turning innovation into a higher growth rate, possibly by exploiting local informal knowledge and/or knowledge spillovers. These results are of great importance for the design of research and innovation policies within the frame of the Europe 2020 strategy.     

Regional Innovation Systems and Economic Performance: Between Regions and Nations

This article aims at assessing the diversity of regional innovation systems and their economic performance in Europe. We propose to adapt the social systems of innovation and production (SSIP) framework at the regional level by identifying the specific arrangements of each part of the innovation and production system. Three key features of European regions are investigated using this framework: the diversity of regional SSIP, the interplay of regional and national determinants of such systems, and the impact of SSIP on regional performance. We identify a typology of regional configurations resulting from the combination of scientific, technological, educational and industrial indicators, using multivariate data analysis. A variance analysis approach is then developed in order to test the existence of specific regional growth regimes. The results highlight a persistently high level of diversity of regional configurations, notably among knowledge intensive regions, but also show that national institutional settings remain of fundamental importance in shaping a number of regional configurations. A final conclusion relates to the weak correlation observed between the structural characteristics of regions and their performance over the 2003–2007 period: regional performance remains primarily shaped by national trends. Overall, the paper questions the regional dimension of these “systems”.     

Out of the crisis: an empirical investigation of place-specific determinants of economic resilience

This article attempts to isolate the structural characteristics that affect the resilience of a regional economy. It focuses on the role played by related/unrelated variety and differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience and originally explores their interdependences. Italy is the empirical setting, and Italian local labour systems the unit of analysis. Regional resilience is measured as growth of the employment rate after the Great Recession that began in 2008. Results confirm the importance of related variety and of differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience. We found support of the creative capacity of culture argument, providing evidence that a moderate concentration in symbolic knowledge-based economic activities contributes to resilience. Synthetic and analytical knowledge-based activities provide positive and no support to regional resilience, respectively. Finally, the relatedness of the symbolic knowledge-based activities increases regional economic resilience. Some policy implications are then derived from these findings.     

Regional Concentration of the Knowledge-based Economy in the EU: Towards a Renewed Oligocentric Model?

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the Knowledge-based Economy spatial distribution across the European Union (EU) regions (NUTS II), linking recent research approaches on innovation and structural change with approaches to regional economics. As a means of conducting this research, we classify economic activities according to six sectors based on their knowledge/technology intensity. Our results show that the higher the knowledge/technology content of the economic activity, the higher the concentration level of the activity. We find that some service activities (those considered knowledge intensive) have similar concentration levels to those operating in high or medium tech manufacturing. With regard to specialization, the most outstanding result is the strong presence of high and medium knowledge intensive service activities in metropolitan/capital regions. In general, our results reinforce the notion that an oligocentric model persists in Europe, with the southern German regions leading high and medium tech manufacturing, the south-east of England leading in high knowledge-intensive services, and with the mid-core model exemplified by the European metropolitan archipelago (particularly capital cities) in both northern and southern Europe.     

Comparison of two cluster life stages in a synthetic knowledge base

ABSTRACT

Knowledge flows in clusters are highly important since they are related to innovation. Types and spatial levels of knowledge sources have been studied by many scholars. This study examines knowledge sources from evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary Economic Geography suggests that regional industries and their dynamics co-evolve. While conceptual and empirical studies argue that network characteristics take different characteristics throughout time, and that knowledge sources are subject to change, little is known about in what way they change in a synthetic knowledge base. In this study, we examined the knowledge sources in a specific knowledge base throughout time. The study was applied to two clusters in Turkey in a synthetic knowledge base yet in different life stages: emergence and maturity. The network structure was analysed by social network analysis, hypotheses were tested by Mann–Whitney U-Tests. The findings show that although network structure and density change through maturity, the types and spatial levels of knowledge sources do not vary between the two life stages, they keep the same characteristics of their knowledge bases.     

REGIONAL GROWTH,INNOVATION, AND LATENT NONLINEAR EFFECTS

This paper studies the link between knowledge, innovation, and growth in European regions using nonparametric methods. Our findings suggest that knowledge inputs and the share of innovative firms have a heterogeneous and nonlinear relationship with growth. This evidence has been exploited to examine the consequences of alternative policies using a counterfactual estimation setup, the results of which imply that increasing the formal knowledge base may be optimal in most regions. Less knowledge and innovation intensive regions will also benefit from a higher innovation potential and from a trustworthy and entrepreneurial economic environment.     

Knowledge-Intensive Business Services as Knowledge Intermediaries in Industrial Regions: A Comparison of the Hsinchu and Tainan Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

The literature repeatedly stresses the role of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) as a provider of knowledge and information to other businesses and organizations. KIBS simultaneously promotes, mediates and enables client innovation. This investigation mainly seeks to link KIBS to the analytical structure of concepts, including regional innovation systems, knowledge exchanges and innovation patterns. This investigation interprets the role of KIBS as that of a knowledge intermediary that mediates and transmits knowledge among actors. This study also clarifies the mechanism of knowledge exchanges in different geographic innovation systems. The analytical results obtained by this investigation are applied to analyse the intermediary functions of KIBS in various metropolitan areas in southern and northern Taiwan. This investigation demonstrates variations in how KIBS act as knowledge intermediaries, and that these variations depend mostly on industrial cluster patterns, the dominant innovation patterns at their locations and the birth of sustainable KIBS. KIBS in large/core metropolitan regions, thus, are initially based on science, technology and innovation industrial activities, and further closely resemble doing, using and interaction industrial activities. Consequently, more informal learning processes, such as local buzz and discussion/competition relations, tend to develop in such regions.     

Globalization,Modes of Innovation and Regional Knowledge Diffusion Infrastructures

Firms increasingly transcend the boundaries of regional innovation systems in their search for technology and complementary capabilities, and only rarely can they build their knowledge bases on science system output alone. Whereas the former decouple firms from regional user–producer networks, the latter raises important questions concerning the role of local science and education system actors in industrial development. By applying the “modes of innovation” concept on a Norwegian region, this paper discusses how science and education institutions can respond to the challenges of knowledge base complexity and globalization. It concludes that such institutions may play a vital role in supporting knowledge-based development, albeit different from that of academic knowledge exploration followed by linear technology transfer to industry.     

How Regional Innovation Systems Play a Relative Competitive Role Within Knowledge Networks

This study aims to explain how specific regional innovation systems (RISs) play relative important role in the knowledge network within European regions. EC encourages the interactions between regions and develop toward a cohesion balance. The whole Europe can be taken as a knowledge network that consists of different RISs possessing diversified resources. The existences of hierarchical relationships between different regions seem to lead us to explain whether the path toward higher-order position can be done by RISs to shape the regional competence in specific technological fields. We establish the datasets on the basis of patent data (from EPO) and REGIO database. Regional-level dataset, including 129 regions, helps to explore how different RIS develop their technological paths, and whether locational economic factors, technological conditions, and local innovativeness help RISs toward high-order position in the network. In addition, we also explore the role of the interaction of local factors for RISs in developing network position in Europe.     

An alternative policy approach to rural development in regions facing population decline

ABSTRACT

Many rural regions in Europe used to be characterized by weak economic performance and negative population development. While in a long-term perspective this is not any more valid for large parts of Western Europe, a number of rural regions face persistent population decline. By analysing the case of Austria, where approximately one-third of rural areas have experienced such negative population change over the past decades, this paper will examine the impact on economic performance, income levels and well-being patterns. Addressing the crucial and persistent obstacles to positive population trends, new theoretical approaches and perspectives are discussed for overcoming limitations in development. Future approaches for regional development have to go beyond strategies for targeting economic growth, but have to address issues of local participation, social innovation and establishing trust as preconditions to effectively impact well-being dimensions. Such a mobilization effort would be the result of a comprehensive social transition process which would foster an altered narrative for these rural regions compared to the current and predominant focus on compensation and growth policies. Despite strong interlinkages with other regions and actors, the needs of local people would be central and both would be a cornerstone for social innovation.     

Regional innovation systems and the labour market: A comparison of five regions

This paper reviews the concept of Regional Innovation Systems with particular attention on the labour market dimension. It argues that the labour force as a repository of skills and knowledge plays a key role in generating knowledge flows within Regional Innovation Systems. Then, by reference to a number of important dimensions characterizing innovation, five regions from northern Europe are contrasted. In light of research undertaken by the authors the paper highlights the problems associated with a regional system that may hamper innovation and it shows that Regional Innovation Systems can be underdeveloped by being too dependent on public support. Accordingly a combination of public and private governance at the regional level to promote systemic innovation is advocated. The paper also shows how the Regional Innovation Systems can evolve and how regions can become increasingly developmental knowledge laboratories influencing labour market conditions.     

Regional development and technology policies: Some lessons from the German experience

The development of economic, ecological, social, cultural and political conditions has a lasting influence on the development of individual regions and economic areas, and is in turn influenced by them. Background conditions in Germany have changed over the last few years, with reunification and the upheavals in Eastern Europe, the prospective completion of the Singh European Market and the increasingly insistent new challenges in the areas of the environment and transport. This paper gives some examples of the changes taking place in some of these background conditions, and discusses their foreseeable future regional impacts in the FRG. In the last 10 years, Baden‐Württemberg in south‐west Germany has been considered as one of the most successful examples in Europe of regional structural adaptation combined with a dynamic innovation system. The characteristics of the economic development of this region and their causes are dealt with.     

When Innovation Does Not Pay Off: Introducing the “European Regional Paradox”

In the last few decades, innovation has been widely recognized to be the engine of wealth and prosperity as it intensifies competition and increases productivity, which both in turn lead to significant economic benefits such as higher income per capita and increased employment. However, empirical evidence in this article illustrates that innovation seems not to have paid-off for some of the most innovative regions in Europe, as these regions, despite being highly innovative, grow at a slower pace than their national counterparts, as well as presenting poor economic outcomes such as low income per capita and high unemployment rates. The aim of this article is to communicate this intriguing observation to both innovation scholars and to policy-makers, since its very existence seems to cast doubt not only on one of the most principal assumptions in the field of innovation studies (i.e. innovation as the engine of growth) but also on one of the most fundamental pillars currently underpinning several regional, national and supranational economic policies.     

Scientific knowledge production in European regions: patterns of growth,diversity and complexity

ABSTRACT

We study regional patterns of scientific knowledge production in Europe using all scientific publications in the period 2000–2014 attributed to 813 scientific subfields. We show that the existing scientific portfolio of regions offers opportunities for related diversification and discourages the creation of knowledge on topics unrelated to the local knowledge base. Many lagging regions show clear growth, but complex knowledge production remains highly concentrated in regions in the North and West of Europe. For lagging regions there are advantages in not specializing too soon and to first diversify before moving into developing more complex knowledge.     

Regional technological change and path dependency in the Danish food processing industry

Evolutionary theories of technological change arguably exert the greatest impact on our understanding of technological change. According to evolutionary economic theory the process of technological change is driven by the continual creation of technological variety through innovation and innovative firm entry and the destruction of variety through the processes of imitation (diffusion), selection and plant exit. This joint process of variety creation and destruction translates micro-economic diversity into technological progress. A third principle of evolutionary economic theory is the principle of heredity, the communication of information and knowledge over time. The dependence of technology on past and existing knowledge tends to move firms, regions and countries along relatively well-defined technological trajectories. In this paper technology is measured as a pair of capital and labour input coefficients. Empirical analysis of the Danish food processing industry reveals that technology varies markedly across regions and that differences in regional technological performance persist over time. Multivariate analysis of variance confirms that spatial variation in techniques of production is significant. This study underpins the evolutionary theory of technological change confirming that in the Danish food processing industry, regions move along relatively well-defined technological trajectories.     

The challenge of breaking the academia–business firewall in Czechia: comparing the role of differentiated knowledge bases in collaborative R&D projects

Contemporary innovation processes increasingly involve a large number of networked actors, and cross-fertilization between knowledge institutions and firms has thus become a significant driver for innovation. Important insights into the differing nature of research and development (R&D) collaboration in particular sectors have been provided by research inspired by the knowledge-base approach embedded within innovation system (IS) theory. This study aims to contribute to this body of literature by applying the concept of differentiated knowledge bases to the former state-socialist countries, where the IS operates through a firewall between academia and industry. Data on collaborative R&D projects co-financed by public resources have allowed a detailed analysis of the nature of collaboration networks, revealing emerging patterns of academia–industry linkages and questioning the propositions stemming from the knowledge-based approach. The study concludes that collaborative science–industry networks show a very distinct topography when analytical and synthetic knowledge is compared.     

Border blocking effects in collaborative firm innovation

Border regions are not often associated with innovation and economic prosperity. And even when they are prosperous, cross-border interaction is still mostly limited. The opening up of borders in Europe has presented new opportunities for firms located in these border regions to co-operate for innovation and knowledge to flow across borders. Despite the reduction of the importance of borders, firms seeking to access cross-border knowledge resources need still to ‘cross’ the border and address the various effects it brings. This paper therefore asks the question of how the presence of a border affects the processes by which firms attempt to build up productive co-operations for innovation. We use a heuristic of collaborative innovation across borders as building up through four sequential cooperation stages, and each of these different stages is susceptible to different kinds of border effects. Using a case study of firms co-operating across the Dutch-Flemish border, we empirically explore these border crossing processes in order to shed further light on how border processes play out.     

PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN THE OLD AND NEW EUROPE: THE ROLE OF AGGLOMERATION EXTERNALITIES

As Europe is currently characterized by huge disparities in the economic performance of “old” and “new” states, we investigate whether this is the result of local agglomeration—specialization and diversity—externalities. Our spatial econometric analysis focuses on total factor productivity dynamics over the period 1996–2007 for 13 industries located in 276 European regions. Consistently with the “nursery cities” theory, we find that diversity exerts a positive effect in the knowledge‐intensive services of the “old” Europe urban areas, while specialization is still effective in the “new” Europe low‐tech manufacturing. Human and technological capital has also a positive impact.