Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
A series of institutional and economic factors at local, regional and national scales
can determine whether an innovation becomes the basis of a new industrial path or
whether it remains isolated and underinvested and is unable to grow. Local institutions
and human resources that have developed as a result of one industry's development in a
region can also be critical causes of, and inputs to, the creation of other industries. These
include the inherited entrepreneurial culture; social structures of innovation; access to
specialist, demanding and knowledgeable customers; the presence of supporting institu-
tions such as intermediaries, law and venture capital i rms; and government provision
of hard and soft infrastructures. Carlsson (2007, p. 265), for example, suggests that 'the
most important aspect of path dependence may be the existing entrepreneurial climate
resulting from pre-existing conditions'. Supporting social infrastructures, however,
are dii cult to orchestrate in a systematic fashion as they are collective and emergent.
Typically, such institutions are not present at the birth of an industry but they gradually
evolve as the local industry develops and as processes of positive lock-in consolidate the
industrial path and reinforce its momentum (for example, Feldman, 2007). In addition,
however, once a supportive generic institutional structure develops for one industry it
can have benei cial consequences for subsequent newly emerging paths in other sectors
(for example, see Zook, 2005). Thus while supportive local selection environments are
typically secondary rather than primary causes of path creation, they can help to develop
a technological niche or a radical innovation so that it stands a better chance of surviving
market selection pressures.
In summary then, the equilibrium model of path dependence and its geographical
of spring accord too little importance to the role of place in shaping new path creation.
In this view, place is coni ned to a set of largely accidental and random initial conditions
and triggers, which are followed by a set of cumulative and reinforcing increasing returns.
Instead, we have argued that place dependence is important well before the unfolding of
reinforcing dynamics as it conditions and inl uences the emergence of paths in particular
sites. There is much evidence that local conditions continue to be important to proc-
esses of i rm spinof and to the emergence of radically new technological and innovation
trajectories. While there is undoubtedly an unpredictable and uncertain dimension to
path creation, this should not be exaggerated so as to completely obscure the deliberate
ex ante selection of promising entrepreneurial ideas and the creative deployment of pre-
existing resources, ideas and relationships. In recent work, chance is conceived as those
random accidents and triggers that occur after the necessary accumulation of antecedent
conditions and assets. But this dual-stage perspective can confuse micro-scale events
with randomness, and its elaboration will need a much clearer exposition of contin-
gency. Certainly, the place-specii c path-dependent processes that help shape industrial
development trajectories are far from deterministic and by no means easy to measure,
as they will interact in a complex manner with extra-local contingencies and the basic
unpredictability of radical innovation. It is not surprising, then, that so far there is very
little research that explores these interacting ef ects, but it is no exaggeration to say that
they are crucial to the long-run adaptability of urban and regional economies.
6. Conclusions: rethinking path dependence?
Our aim in this chapter has been to examine how far and in what ways path dependence
can serve as an explicitly
evolutionary
concept for studying the economic landscape,
