Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 3
.
2
Varieties of path creation
Origins of new path of development
Place and path ef ects
Deliberate and intentional
Chance and accidental
Enabling new paths
1. Agents search for
opportunities, re-use
resources, transfer
competences as basis of
new growth
2. Agents gain assets and
experience, but accidents
and events trigger new path
Constraining to existing path
3. Designed interventions to
break path or switch location
to overcome lock-in
4. Unpredictable external
shocks and random events
break old trajectory and launch
new path
dependence is rooted in quadrant 4, more recent work in economic geography has begun
to move closer to positions in quadrants 2 and 1, and has put much more emphasis on
the re-use and transfer of resources and competences.
This wider set of possibilities raises a series of questions about the strength of path-
dependent enabling ef ects. The dominant view in evolutionary economic geography
has been that pre-existing paths of development are all but irrelevant in determining
where new industrial paths emerge and become established. For example, Storper (1995)
proposes the so-called 'window of locational opportunity' approach referred to above,
in which - as he sees this idea - new technologies start as generic assets and then only
subsequently evolve into specii c assets. Initially, new sectors based on radically new
technologies have few established specii c inputs so that they 'invent' their own input
chains and the associated knowledge, which is why, he claims, their initial location
is basically serendipitous: this explains why, he argues, the semiconductor industry
grew up in Silicon Valley and not alongside its parent industry - radio and television
equipment - on the east coast. New industries enjoy moments of enhanced locational
freedom called 'windows of locational opportunity' (Scott and Storper, 1987). In such
periods, 'Capitalism is capable of escaping the past to create new localizations of indus-
try' (Storper and Walker, 1989, p. 71). Similarly, according to Boschma and Frenken
(2003, pp. 20-21).
the evolutionary approach argues that the selection pressure of existing spatial structures is
rather weak when new industries emerge. Under certain circumstances there are good reasons
to assume that place specii c features do not determine the location of new sectors. The envi-
ronment is considered to be of minor importance at the initial stage of development of a sector
when there exists a gap between the requirements of the new industry (in terms of knowledge,
skills, etc.) and its surrounding environment. Windows of locational opportunity are open in
emerging industries.
Thus, during the emergence of a new technology or industry, there will be a relatively
large number of locations possessing the generic conditions that would allow the new
sectors to grow there. New i rms can locate where they please within this variety of places.
What then happens, according to this thesis, is that one of these locational contenders is
'selected', often by inexplicable chance and random events, so that local enabling ef ects
