European Regional Science Association
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European Regional Science Association
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The abstract for paper number 20:
Gerhard Fuchs, Center for Technology Assessment, Stuttgart, Germany
Regional Development and Social Capital in a Knowledge-based Economy: The Role of Policy
Recent approaches to the study of innovations stress similar aspects of the innovation process in knowledge based economies: the systemic and interrelated nature of innovation, and its grounding in dense networks of geographically proximate firms engaged in related types of economic activity. One approach is rooted in the innovation systems approach at both the national and regional or even local level. Recent research suggests that even the most specialized forms of knowledge are becoming a short lived resource, due to the accelerating pace of change in the global economy; it is the capacity to learn continuously and adapt to rapidly changing conditions that determines the innovative performance of firms, regions and countries. Another approach is to be found in the studies on cluster development. Although they each operate at slightly different spatial scales of analysis, both approaches identify a number of key factors that contribute to the way in which a complex set of institutions and actors, comprising the innovation system or the cluster respectively, contribute to the process of innovation and economic growth. However, both suffer from the same limitation: a tendency to focus on the descriptive and analytical level at the expense of the explanatory level. What local and regional authorities and policy makers are interested in is the process by which clusters take hold and expand in the context of local and regional economies. This paper sets out to explore what we currently know about this process and lays out a research agenda to further our knowledge in the field.
Unfortunately full paper has not been submitted.