Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
18.4.1 The Rise and Evolution of Knowledge-Intensive Production
Most of the literature on the emergence of knowledge-intensive production focuses
largely on what may be described as innovation networks which nurture and
commercialize innovation and industrial adaptation in various regions (Bathelt
2001
; Scott
1998
;Best
2000
; Cooke et al.
2011
). The key idea in this vast literature
that has burgeoned over the last two decades or more is that innovation or the
creation and commercialization of new knowledge in a dynamic region is based on
multidimensional interactions
among autonomous but interdependent economic
agents (Camagni
2005
; Capello
2011
).
Such models have been already noted in Part II of this paper as “Economic Gains
from Urban Agglomerations”. Of the latter group, the relevant category is 'Models
of Innovation-led Agglomerations'.
To recapitulate, these models attribute knowledge generation, spillovers, and
accumulation in 'Creative Regions' to:
1.
Physical proximity
among economic actors, facilitating interactions and
enabling access to appropriation and sharing of tacit knowledge, thus promoting
innovation,
2.
Relational Proximity
of economic agents, facilitating cooperative behavior,
collective learning, and socialization of innovation risk, and
3.
Institutional Proximit
y among the firms in the urban agglomeration in terms of
shared rules, codes and norms of regional behavior which will promote cooper-
ation in interactive learning processes
These linkages and interactions allow firms and other economic agents to
complement their core competencies with requisite knowledge and capacities
from other economic actors creatively, speedily, and flexibly. Such linkages are
really 'embedded in the social network'.
6
Firms (often small and medium-sized) in
such regions develop flexible and interdependent relationships with suppliers and
competitors and increasingly depend on intangibles, like know-how, synergies, and
untraded knowledge (Von Hippel
1988
; Storper
1995
).
Other explanations (Glaeser
2003
) for regional reinvention and structural change
note the importance of human capital—suggesting that it is the broad skill base
which underlies regional change and evolution. However, such discussions shed
little light on the mechanisms through which varied human capital offers the region
the flexibility and capacity to change significantly its economic structure and
composition. Others emphasize 'Open Innovation' (Saxenian
1994
; Simard and
West
2006
) for regional growth or the open networks, which allow the urban region
to adjust frequently to new conditions and meet the periodic demand for change.
6
Indeed, even the ('autonomous') market relations emphasized in the neoclassical economists'
world are socially embedded in the sense that they depend upon assumptions, norms, and
institutions shared by the actors and do not themselves derive from economic decisions (Polyanyi
1944
; Granovetter
1985
). The recent interest in social capital as key supporting asset of produc-
tivity has been inspired by the spatial clustering and dynamism in places such as Italy's Emilia-
Romagna and California's Santa Clara Region.
