Geography Reference
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network approach referring to 'governance' as an 'organizing collective action'. This
broad network approach accepts that 'there is no necessary reason for these [i.e. path of
technology creation and governance evolution] to coincide either in space or time' (von
Tunzelmann, 2003, p. 379). This approach is close to the understanding of a national or
regional innovation system often adopted in geography, which is not concerned with a
specii c technology and a specii c 'bi-causality'.
Is the co-evolutionary approach therefore only useful for a long-term perspective in
economic geography, a perspective that is not central to economic geography today? I do
not think so. Let us return to the example of the dye industry. Murmann has shown how
in a fairly short period the emergence of a new technology (product) became possible
through new interlinking with research institutions, as part of long-term co-evolution. It
can be concluded from this that current processes in co-evolution can also be analysed
even if it is not possible to deduce a long-term development path from them. Obviously
the latter can only ever be identii ed after the fact. In this context it should be possible
to see the Pelikan-Nelson controversy in a new light. Nelson (2002) sees in the routines
the concept that unites evolution and institution. According to him, routines are not
merely 'physical' technologies, but also 'standardised patterns of human transactions'
or a 'social technology'. One of Pelikan's arguments for not following Nelson in his
dei nition of institutions refers to the issue of the extent to which an institution allows
agents to behave in dif erent ways: a routine is (too) narrow a guideline, while a rule, as
dei ned by North, is a limiting framework for several behavioural options (Pelikan, 2003,
p. 244). While I sympathise with Pelikan and prefer North's view of institutions, it still
seems possible that changes in routines may not only be the result but also the cause of
changes in institutions (as rules). Consider for example new routines in labour divided
on the basis of information technology, which, when they become standards, are likely
to allow new sectors and organisations such as call centres, consultancy i rms and so on
to develop in new locations. Current of shoring processes could thus be interpreted and
analysed from the point of view of economic geography as co-evolutionary processes.
In this way a debate can develop in economic geography that does not see the evolution
of a technology/sector as the result of co-evolving institutions external to the companies,
but increasingly sees this as the product of evolution within the companies. This can
include such dissimilar phenomena as the acquisition of competences through outsourc-
ing to a newly emerging sector, the learning of new technologies through company-
internal competence in 'related' technologies or the establishment of a new business form
such as the co-operative, an impressive case study of which has recently been provided by
Frenken and van der Steege (2006) using the example of the Dutch dairy industry.
5. The co-evolution of regions and populations of i rms - a special case for geographers
The regional perspective remains a central focus of geography. This construct is there-
fore a test for the usefulness of the adoption of the evolutionary approach and the
concept of co-evolution in economic geography. As processes in time - not in space -
are the central theme of evolutionary theory, a static view such as in the discussion on
dif erent types and concepts of what a region might be, which geographers sometimes
pursue in exhaustive detail (Allen et al., 1998; Paasi, 2004), is not appropriate here.
Rather the question arises as to how a region as a specii c territorial unit emerges in
combination with an emerging new i rm population based on a new technology. It is
