Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
private ones as well. Distinguishing actors according to their presence in the network,
we i nd a development in opposing directions. Permanent actors are increasingly inward
oriented, while for non-persistent actors we i nd that entrants are more outward oriented
than the exiting innovators. The antenna function that permanent and central actors -
especially universities - are assumed to fuli l, seemingly shows diminishing importance,
at least in relative terms.
5. Conclusion
In this chapter we discuss some issues pertaining to the development or evolution of
innovation networks. Actors, heterogeneous in terms of technological knowledge and
competences, who seek to cooperate do so to gain access to other actors' knowledge
and exchange it for their own knowledge. Connecting such cooperative actors within
one region, one ends up with a system or network of innovating i rms. Consisting of
bilateral knowledge relationships, the network of innovators may change its size and its
structure over time, new relationships come into existence, existing relationships may be
cancelled, new actors join the system, and other actors leave it. Based on those structure-
generating factors one can presume that the system as a whole in some periods tends to
become more coherent and the actors to be more connected, whereas in other periods the
tendency to disconnect and to weaken the system may prevail.
Our study on the Jena network of innovators represents just the case where the tech-
nological potentials for cooperation increased over time accompanied by a growth in the
number of actors involved and a higher connectedness among them. These tendencies
are nicely related to the specii c contributions of permanent, entering, and exiting actors,
as well as of actors internal to the region of Jena and those who are external. Exiters tend
to be less integrated into the innovators' network than entrants. Although the share of
external actors increased over time the share of external linkages diminishes over time.
Thus we observe an increasing orientation of the network's innovation activities with
internal partners. The fact that permanent actors strongly intensify their internal rela-
tions seems to be the main driver of this development. This pattern can be interpreted
as documenting the attractiveness of the Jena knowledge pool, for internal as well as
external actors.
What we have presented here is the study of a single innovator network and its change
over time. Such a network has to be viewed as a constituent part of an innovation system.
One of the drivers of innovations, institutions, cannot be observed directly within this
methodology, as we can only observe the relations but not the rules that govern them.
Evolutionary economic geography is surely more than what we present here. It is not
about single places but it is about the patterns of economic activity in space. We tried to
account for this aspect by not only focusing on the changing relations within the regional
network, but also by analysing the relations to actors located in other regions. A theory
of a networked economy has to encompass these dif erent types of relations, as becomes
apparent in the notions of local buzz and global pipelines (Bathelt et al., 2004). As such,
an economy can be viewed as a small world network not only in terms of relations
(Cowan and Jonard, 2004), but also in terms of geography. A densely connected network
as in our case of Jena is linked to global knowledge channels via their external relations.
It is of critical importance for any regional development that these linkages go in both
directions (otherwise it would be a brain drain rather than a brain gain) and that they
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