Synopses & Reviews
This volume highlights the importance of interactive, practice-based learning as a means to promote more thorough innovation dynamics in regional and national economies. Successful experiences in Scandanavia and southern European countries are examined, with insightful policy lessons extracted from each case.
Synopsis
This book is about neighbourhoods and networks between the diverse people of contemporary Europe who live in a globalized and globalizing world and across different types of borders: physical and mental, geopolitical and symbolic. The book's theme is set within the larger framework of globalization and geopolitical reordering on the European continent, processes in which the supranational EU has played a highly significant role and where transnational relations increasingly become the norm. This collection is based on qualitative social research in a range of European locations. It explores community relations that are marked by boundaries whose primary local definitions are national, ethnic or racial, and it examines the local negotiations of those boundaries, including the attempts to overcome them. The book thus brings into comparative perspective the negotiations of national and historical identities that are often foregrounded by border studies, and concerns with ethnic and multicultural identities which tend to be the domain of migration studies.
About the Author
MARIO DAVIDE PARRILLI is Associate Professor in Economics andDirector of PhD in Economics and Business Studies at theUniversity of Deusto, Bilbao and San Sebastian, Spain,and Senior Research Fellow at the Basque Institute of Competitiveness, San Sebastian.He has been working on small and medium-sized enterprise development for many years as well as on territorial development, innovation systems and social capital. He has recently published SME cluster development (2007), and High-Technology, productivity and networks (2008).
BJÖRN T. ASHEIM is Professor and Chair in Economic Geography at the Department of Human Geography, and Director at CIRCLE (Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning Economy), Lund University, Sweden. He is an internationallyrenowned researcher within economic geography and regional innovation studies. In addition to numerous journal articles he has edited books on SMEs and Regional Innovation Policy (2003) and Clusters and regional development (2006).
Table of Contents
Introduction
PART I: THEORETICAL INSIGHTS FROM THE LITERATURE ON STI AND DUI
Innovation and Competence Building in the Learnign Economy: Implications for Innovation Policy; B.Lundvall& E.Lorenz
Labour Market Institutions, Skills, and Innovation Style: a Critique of the Varieties of Capitalism perspective; E.Lorenz
Organization and Innovation: The Topic of Creative Cities; B.Johnson
The Knowledge Economy, Spillovers, Proximity and Specialisation; P.Cooke
PART II: CLUSTERS, FIRMS AND INNOVATION SYSTEMS
Combined and Complex Mode of Innovation in Regional Cluster Development: Analysis of the light-weight Material Cluster in Raufoss, Norway; A.Isaksen& J.Karlsen
Facilitating Cluster Evolution in Peripheral Regions: the Role of Clusterpreneurs; J.Christensen& D.Stoerring
Social Capital, Knowledge and Competitiveness: the case of the Basque Paper Cluster and the Electronics and ICT Cluster; J.Valdaliso, M.Aranguren, A.Elola& S.López
Firm Heterogeneity and Trajectories of Learning: Applications and Relevant Policy Implications; M.Aranguren, M.Larrea& M.Parrilli
Innovation Capabilities and Learning as Arguments to Support R&D in Enterprises: Virtuous and Vicious Cycles; J.Hejis
Typologies of Innovation Based on Statistical Analysis for European and Spanish Regions; M.Navarro& J.Gibaja
Academia and Public Policy: Towards the Co-generation of Kowledge and Learning Processes; M.Aranguren, M.Larrea& J.Wilson