Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in this - restricted - sense that I referred to the region as a specii c (though admittedly
highly complex) form of institution in the opening section of this chapter. This is not
to say that co-evolutionary processes may operate at various spatial scales. The focus
here is on the necessity of co-emerging important local institutions if co-evolution of
i rm population and region are assumed to exist. If this view is accepted, then the co-
evolution of sector (technology) and region in the context of the bi-causality called for
by Murmann (2003) or Malerba (2006) requires that the region constitutes itself in close
association with the emerging new i rm population and technology, and that this tech-
nology can only become established in competition with other technologies through the
co-emerging local institutions. This has two implications: i rst, the region is then under-
stood as a specii c social construct, which constitutes itself through networks, shared
knowledge and shared ideas and so on via and in association with the relevant technol-
ogy or the i rms representing this technology; second, this region is linked exclusively to
the technology in question, or its i rms, at both the temporal and the spatial level. The
region can therefore be temporary and variable in its extent. The view of co-evolution
as an institutionalisation process of the region calls for a detailed analysis of the interac-
tion of technology and institutionalisation, as suggested in section 4 and exemplii ed by
Murmann's analysis of the German dye industry.
This view of the co-evolution of i rms (technology) and regions corresponds most
closely to the concepts of the district and cluster as they are seen in economic geogra-
phy. The ef ects of the co-location of i rms using a particular technology on the growth
of the i rms have been addressed by several authors under the heading of processes of
self-reinforcement and self-organisation (e.g. Brenner, 2004), collective order (Scott
and Paul, 1990), collective ei ciency (Schmitz, 1995) or in more general terms creating
local increasing returns (Schamp, 2002). This alone does not appear sui cient for a co-
evolutionary approach, as frequently only a uni-causality is examined, for example how
local immobile factors such as untraded interdependencies (Storper, 1997) encourage
the development and persistence of a cluster. Co-evolution in the sense referred to here
would only exist if the particular regional institutions that reinforce the evolution of
the technology came into being with the development of the technological cluster, and,
as a result, a new 'region' came into existence. Likewise, the co-evolution of a sector or
technology and the region would take place if a specii c local form of path dependence or
'place dependence' in technological development could be proven to exist (Martin and
Sunley, 2006, p. 409).
Various attempts to understand the geographical region as an institution point the
way. Hayter (2004), for example, emphasises Holmén's (1995) view of the region as a
'meeting place' of interests, as an arena in which conl icts over resources, including those
for the development of i rms in a specii c new technology, are played out. This is certainly
a starting point for the examination of ways in which technology and region may co-
evolve. Nevertheless, this alone would not be sui cient, as the formation of regions as an
institutionalisation process must be thought of multidimensionally. Co-evolution only
begins to take place with the development of new institutions that are tied to a region and
simultaneously encourage the development of the specii c i rms (technology).
In this very narrow and specii c sense of the co-evolution of i rms and regions there
is still a fundamental lack of empirical data. Clusters can also develop in other ways,
such as through the ef ect of static-urban agglomeration advantages, as discussed in
