Thisbookisbasedonpaperspresentedataninternationalworkshoporganisedin Jo]nko]ping, Sweden, inJune2005tocelebratethe60thbirthdayofProfessorBorje ] Johansson adearfriendandadmiredcolleagueofours. Thebookprovidesa limited sample of Bo]rje Johansson s broad ranging research interests. In this volume, some of his friends and colleagues have contributed chapters on the themeof Innovation, DynamicRegions, andRegionalDynamics . Thisisa?eld ofresearchinwhichBo]rjeJohanssonhasbeenagreatinspirationtousall, andto whichhehim-selfhascontributedwithcharacteristicenthusiasmandinsightaspart...

The purpose of this book is to provide a state-of-the-art overview of current research on spatial industrial clusters and inter-firm networks. Given the current political belief in many countries and regions that clusters can be a major vehicle for economic development and growth, it is important to have a good understanding of industrial clusters and how they emerge, grow, eventually stagnate and disappear. Also an understanding is needed about when and how to apply policy measures to support cluster development to increase economic welfare. This book contributes to the theoretical and...

This book reveals the key importance, in terms of international competitiveness, of firms' capability to adapt to, and develop, new technologies. At the same time, the authors argue that the sheer complexity of emerging technologies is such that the knowledge involved in their creation is likely to be dispersed and distributed between many individuals and over numerous locations. The authors argue that even if one assumes that the internal knowledge base is of strategic importance to many companies, most of the knowledge used by the majority of companies is developed outside the company....

During the last two decades a new growth theory has emerged - often labelled "endogenous economic growth." The contributions in the book develop these advances into a theoretical framework for endogenous regional economic growth and explain the implications for regional economic policies in the perspective of the new century. Endogenous growth models can reflect increasing returns and hence refer more adequately to empirical observations than earlier models, and the models become policy relevant, because in endogenous growth models policy matters. Such policies comprise efforts to stimulate...

Thisbookisbasedonpaperspresentedataninternationalworkshoporganisedin Jo]nko]ping, Sweden, inJune2005tocelebratethe60thbirthdayofProfessorBorje ] Johansson adearfriendandadmiredcolleagueofours. Thebookprovidesa limited sample of Bo]rje Johansson s broad ranging research interests. In this volume, some of his friends and colleagues have contributed chapters on the themeof Innovation, DynamicRegions, andRegionalDynamics . Thisisa?eld ofresearchinwhichBo]rjeJohanssonhasbeenagreatinspirationtousall, andto whichhehim-selfhascontributedwithcharacteristicenthusiasmandinsightaspart...

This book highlights the role of entrepreneurship, social capital and governance for regional economic development. In recent decades, many researchers have claimed that entrepreneurship is the most critical factor in sustaining regional economic growth. However, most entrepreneurship research is undertaken without considering the fundamental importance of the regional context. Other research has emphasized the role of social capital but there are substantial problems in empirically relating measures of social capital to regional economic development.

Regional economic development has experienced considerable dynamism over recent years. Perhaps the most notable cases were the rise of China and India to emergent country status by the turn of the millennium. With time now for hindsight, this book identifies some of the key forces behind these development successes, namely agglomeration, clusters and entrepreneurship.

The phenomenon of entrepreneurship has attracted researchers from a variety of disciplines and a diverse number of analytical approaches. Currently, there is a considerable amount of confusion and a variety of conflicting theories which are being used interchangeably and ambiguously. In this important new book, the authors argue that there are analytically distinct forms of entrepreneurship, each of them having an individual logic of their own. They highlight the role of individual economic agents with endowments of new knowledge or new combinations of old knowledge as entrepreneurs, and thus...

The contributions in this volume extend our understanding about the different ways distance impacts the knowledge conversion process. Knowledge itself is a raw input into the innovation process which can then transform it into an economically useful output such as prototypes, patents, licences and new companies. New knowledge is often tacit and thus tends to be highly localized, as indeed is the conversion process. Consequently, as the book demonstrates, space or distance matter significantly in the transformation of raw knowledge into beneficial knowledge.