Benefitting from Learning Networks in “Open Innovation”: Spin-off Firms in Contrasting City Regions

R&D and innovation increasingly take place in networks that extend beyond the boundaries of a single firm, with customers in an important role in the learning processes involved. This phenomenon is captured by the term “open innovation”. Advantages of open innovation encompass cost reduction and an increased competitiveness. Spatial innovation theory however indicates that the potential of open innovation is not the same for all urban regions, there may be differences between large metropolitan areas and small cities. In this context, the authors compare university spin-off firms in two contrasting urban regions in Europe, Delft in the Netherlands and Trondheim in Norway (a metropolitan area versus an isolated city) with regard to the profile of their learning networks and the contribution of these networks to growth. Learning networks appear to differ in structure and strength, in spatial configuration and also in the influence on job growth. Thus, networks in Delft (in a large metropolitan area) tend to be stronger compared to those in Trondheim (isolated city), whereas the influence of network strength on growth tends to be negative in Delft but positive in Trondheim. Overall, firms in Trondheim tend to rely more on own resources and capabilities and less on learning networks in open innovation.     

Adjustment or renewal in regional clusters? A study of diversification amongst SMEs in the Aberdeen oil complex

A renewed interest in the spatial clustering or agglomeration of economic activity is evident within economic geography and related fields. This paper considers processes of change within 'mature' regional clusters, developing a conceptual framework which links firm-level strategies to development scenarios at the cluster level through a set of intervening mechanisms. Whange, enabling the cluster to sustain its prosperity, and adjustment which is associated with stagnation and gradual decline. This conceptual framework is applied to an analysis of one key mechanism of change, diversification, as pursued by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Aberdeen oil cluster. Our analysis indicates that some diversification is occurring, with the implications for the cluster lying midway between adjustment and renewal. In conclusion, we emphasize the need to assess and 'unpack' the clusters concept and suggest that research should focus on the relationships between proximity, learning and evolution.     

Suicide: the spatial and social components of despair in Britain 1980–2000

In this paper we show that, by accounting for the varying influence of just three area indicators of social isolation, it is possible to predict the number of deaths due to suicide and undetermined injuries (most of which are suicides) across a great many areas remarkably closely. The exceptions to this model suggest that in a few unique areas of the country other local, often historical and cultural or intrinsically geographical factors matter also. These findings of the general predictability of suicide matter because suicide is such a common cause of death, particularly for the young. Between 1 January 1981 and 31 December 2000, the underlying cause of the deaths of 130 000 people in Britain were recorded as being directly due to suicide, or in all probability being due to suicide. Collectively, these thousands of personal stories are brought together here to show how a pattern of despair in Britain over this period was spread across the country, affecting different places and different groups in society to differing extents over changing times. The changing geography of despair can be shown to be largely the product of changing economic, social and demographic geographies. This paper is concerned with determining the extent to which the stories of suicide in Britain were more than the sum of thousands of individual acts of misery and the extent to which they reflected the changing social structure of the country. Quantitative analysis is used to identify possible key trends with a more qualitative set of interpretations placed on the possible meanings of these findings. The paper concludes by speculating on how current social trends may influence the future map of the extremes of despair in Britain.     

Labour electoral landslides and the changing efficiency of voting distributions

The translation of votes into seats under first–past–the–post electoral systems with single–member constituencies invariably results in disproportional allocations of seats relative to votes among the main two parties. It also tends to produce biased outcomes, with one party getting a more disproportionate share of the seats with a given share of the votes than does its opponent. In Great Britain, these biases favoured the Conservative party until the 1980s, but now strongly favour Labour. Production of those biases results from a variety of influences involving the interaction of the geography of party support with that of constituency boundaries. Increasingly, that interaction has favoured Labour: without any explicit manipulation of the constituency map to its own ends, it now benefits substantially from the equivalent of the malapportionment and gerrymandering cartographic abuses typical of the United States, because of its ability to manipulate its vote distribution within the constituency system.     

‘I am Tower of Hamlets’: enchanted encounters and the limit to art’s connectivity

‘I am Tower of Hamlets, as I am in Tower of Hamlets, just like a lot of other people are’ (2011–2012) was an artwork by Argentinian artist Amalia Pica, and involved a pink-granite sculpture touring around different homes in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for one year. This paper offers a geographical investigation into the type of encounters and relations created by this artwork. Rather than assume the progressive role of such art encounters, the paper casts a critical eye on to the actual forms of association that they foster and the normative social logics they may perpetuate. In doing so, it suggests that while enchanted, ‘meaningful’ encounters did occur between participants and the sculpture, these occurred within a pre-existing art community, something which compounded problematic class boundaries. Thus, the paper utilises this artwork to identify how encounters can be meaningful whilst maintaining embedded social and cultural divisions. It concludes with a discussion on the relationship between art and the geographies of encounter.     

New State Spaces,Agency and Scale: Devolution and the Regionalisation of Transport Governance in Scotland

Abstract: New state spaces can be seen as products of the interaction between emerging initiatives and pre‐existing institutional arrangements ( Peck 1998 , Space and Polity 2:5–31). In the devolved territories of the UK devolution has created new political centres of policy formulation and this paper is concerned with how devolved policy initiatives are reshaping and rescaling sub‐national spaces of governance. We focus on the rescaling of transport governance in Scotland through a nationally orchestrated process of regionalisation involving the creation of Regional Transport Partnerships (RTPs), an initiative that has been shaped by tensions between changing national political objectives and local interests. Our approach draws on Neil Brenner's “new state spaces” (NSS) framework, which has value in emphasising the historically embedded and path‐dependent nature of restructuring processes. At the same time, its abstract nature leads the NSS approach to privilege the broad processes that generate new configurations of state power over the complex politics associated with the restructuring of particular spaces. In response, we suggest a new theoretical synthesis that draws NSS together with the ancillary notions of “regional armatures” and “the politics of scale” to provide a stronger purchase on the political agency and struggles that “form” and “mould” particular spaces.     

Increasing livelihood vulnerabilities to coastal erosion and wastewater intrusion: The political ecology of Thai aquaculture in peri-urban Bangkok

Most livelihood research focuses on micro-level decisions affecting occupations but fails to examine wider scale processes that shape markets, institutions, and thus livelihood choices. A political ecology framework can help address this gap by providing ways to analyse how multi-scalar and extra-local practices, policies, and discourses affect local-level socio-environmental outcomes. In the qualitative research reported here, that framework is applied to Tha Kam, a peri-urban coastal sub-district of Bangkok, where most residents are small-scale aquaculture farmers. These farmers have experienced precipitous drops in incomes because of two major environmental changes: coastal erosion and wastewater intrusion. The causes are multiple and complex, and many originate not from practices within Tha Kham but from challenges present at a larger scale or that start upstream. The political and economic drivers of these problems stem from Thailand’s fragmented vertical and horizontal governance structure, unequal class relations in which smallholder farmers and peri-urban residents are marginalised, and lack of accountability and representation. This combination of multi-scalar factors and power imbalances has contributed to evolving injustices of peri-urbanisation, all of which are profoundly geographical in their significance.     

Studies on Amerindian dogs, 3: Prehistoric wolf/dog hybrids from the northwestern plains

Discriminant function analysis is an invaluable statistical tool for the taxonomic identification of hybrids between various extant species of Canis in the eastern United States. This technique has recently been applied to the taxonomic identification of canid skulls from several Wyoming archaeological sites. Analysis indicates most canid remains, originally identified as wolf (Canis lupus), to be wolf/dog hybrids exhibiting constant and continual backbreeding to the local wolf populations. The spatial and temporal extent of the form is discussed.