Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
phy of successful entrepreneurship to some extent. These questions, among others, are
crucial to develop an evolutionary economic geography framework that is embedded in
a dynamic view on entrepreneurship.
Besides the question of where entrepreneurs create new routines in space, an evolu-
tionary approach in economic geography is also concerned with how routines develop
further within i rms, and in relation to their regional environment. In Chapter 7,
Cristiano Antonelli addresses the importance of pecuniary knowledge externalities for
localised learning and cluster development. While technological knowledge externalities
have gained most attention and are often assumed to be 'in the air' (to use Marshall's
phrase), Antonelli assigns pecuniary externalities a central role in the generation and
exploitation of knowledge. He explains why technological learning is spatially biased,
and i rms will use idiosyncratic production factors that are locally abundant. This pro-
vides a theoretical explanation for the development of distinctive competences within
i rms, for the phenomenon of localised learning, and the spatial clustering of i rms.
When an evolutionary approach in economic geography is used to deal with the spatial
evolution of routines, interest focuses especially on how i rms employ and develop
spatial strategies over time (see for example Brouwer, 2005). Routines are dif used across
the economic landscape through organisational practices like the relocation of i rms
(Knoben, 2007; Stam, 2007), merger and acquisition activity of i rms located in dif er-
ent places, and the establishment of new plants by incumbent i rms in other locations
(Wintjens, 2001). Analysing the evolution of spatial strategies of i rms, evolutionary eco-
nomic geography has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of the process
of globalisation through the spatial dif usion of routines within and between i rms.
In Chapter 8, Simona Iammarino and Phil McCann provide an explanation for why
the strategies of multi-national entreprises (MNEs) result in a pattern of 'concentrated
dispersion' worldwide. They claim that i rms accumulate dif erent competences in time
and space, which impacts on their incentives to co-locate and tap into complementary
knowledge bases in dif erent locations. This brings up a range of issues that are very
relevant to an evolutionary approach in economic geography, for example: what kind of
strategies do MNEs follow to overcome geographical and other barriers in order to access
distant knowledge bases, and how can host regions successfully benei t from incoming
MNEs in terms of knowledge transfer (see, for example, Cantwell and Santangelo, 2002;
Morgan, 1997; Morrison, 2008)? And crucial for an evolutionary approach, what are
the dynamics in the relationship between MNEs and the host regions (e.g. Cantwell and
Iammarino, 2003). Research suggests that, in certain circumstances, the multinational
i rm may become more embedded in the host region over time, and will transform the
local environment of the host region accordingly (see, for example, Dunning, 1994; Peng,
1995; Storper, 1997; Wintjens, 2001).
As Iammarino and McCann also point out in their contribution, an evolutionary
approach provides a powerful framework to explain the tendency of economic activities
to agglomerate and of industries to cluster spatially (see Malmberg and Maskell, 1997,
2002). Because routine replication and processes of learning are often subject to failure,
it helps to be co-located. What is more, routine replication and knowledge accumulation
tend to operate at the regional level because the mechanisms through which they operate
(like spinof activity, i rm diversii cation, labour mobility and social networking) tend to
have a regional bias (Boschma and Frenken, 2009b): spinof s tend to locate near their
