Saxony's capital Dresden: On the way to become Eastern Germany's first Innovative Milieu?

In this paper, the chances of Saxonys capital city Dresden to become Eastern Germanys first high-tech-region is discussed. A presentation of the theoretical background of innovative milieux is followed by an overview of the regions universities, R&D institutes and other facilities relevant for milieu formation. Afterwards, the establishment of high-tech enterprises in the Dresden area is analyzed. The paper concludes giving a view of the regions further development potential. --

Innovation cooperation in East Germany - only a half-way success?

The paper focuses on the question whether enterprises that engage in innovation cooperation with external partners are more innovative and thus more productive than non-cooperating firms. A comparison between East and West Germany is being made. It shows that cooperating enterprises in East and West Germany are indeed more innovative than non-cooperating firms, but there remains a clear productivity gap between East and West German cooperating firms. Furthermore, in East Germany - different from West Germany - non-cooperating firms are even more productive than cooperating firms.

The InnoRegio-program: a new way to promote regional innovation networks - empirical results of the complementary research -

Ten years after German reunification the economic situation in the new Federal Länder is still unsatisfactory. New approaches are being sought in promotional policy so that the weaknesses that are known or suspected can be better targeted and removed. One of these weaknesses is the lack of research, and thconsequent shortage of innovation by companies. Another is inadequate regional cohesion between companies and related facilities. Formal and informal co-operation between the various regional protagonists is regarded as essential to strengthen corporate innovation and exploit the regional economic potential, and that means networking companies, research facilities, universities, the administration and politicians. In April 1999 the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) therefore launched a promotional initiative known as the InnoRegio. Prospective participants were invited to enter a competition for promotion funds by putting forward concepts for the development of innovative regional joint ventures or associations. During the period from 1999 to 2005 the BMBF will provide a total of 255 million for this Initiative. Thus, the InnoRegio-Contest is the most important pillar of the ministry's innovation policy for East Germany. In the course of 2001, two further measures have been added to the promotion of regional innovative networks, "Innovative Regional Growth Cores" and "Interregional Alliances". The implementation of the InnoRegio Initiative will be monitored by complementary research until 2005 which is conducted by the DIW Berlin. This article outlines the concept of the promotion and selected empirical results of the development of the InnoRegio networks and the establishments involved. Finally, some conceptual differences between the three programs mentioned and their relation to innovation policy as well as regional policy in Germany are discussed.

Deregulation and Enterprization in Central and Eastern Telecommunication - a Benchmark for the West?

The restructuring of telecommunication in Central and Eastern Europe occurs at a time when the classical structures of telecommunication are falling apart worldwide. Coming from the socialist system in which telecommunication did not exist as an independent economic activity, the Eastern European countries have created specific "post-socialist" modes of reform, often outdoing Western countries in terms of speed and radicality. Deregulation and enterprization have dominated the process in all countries, leading to advanced technical standards and a wide segmentation of telecommunication markets. The role of foreign direct investment and technology transfer was particularly important. But the reforms also lead to an increasing social gap between the prosperous users of advanced telecommunication services, and the average citizen for which even telephony has become a luxury good. Our thesis is that CEE telecommunication reform, rather than copying Western models, may become a benchmark for the West, in particular for Western Europe. Technically, the advanced reform countries in Central Europe are about to succeed the leapfrogging process, i.e. the jump from post-war socialist technologies to world-leading edge-of-technology standards. With regard to industry structures, Central and Eastern European countries show that the age of "classical" integrated telecommunication activities is definitely over. Instead, most diversified telecommunication services are integrated in the emerging information sector. Finally, the very notion of telecommunication as an "infrastructure" is put in question for the first time in Eastern Europe. We start to address the two relevant policy issues: modes of regulation, and science and technology policies to accompany the restructuring process.

Internet, adjustment of firms and the spatial division of labour

The rise of the Internet has been heralded as the 'death of distance' that may eventually entail a 'decline of the city'. Whether or not these futuristic visions will materialize will depend upon how firms and industries react to the Internet as a general-purpose technology. Besides the locational choice of New Economy firms themselves it is the adoption of E-commerce in industries of the 'old' economy which has the potential for re-shaping the economic geography of regions, and which may, in many instances radically so, change the way to manage the internal organization of firms as well as relationships with business partners (B2B) and with consumers (B2C). The paper aims at discussing elements of a conceptual approach for evaluating these spatial effects of E-commerce activities on locational patterns in the old economy by identifying suitable proxy indicators from existing evidence, such as connectivity to IT-infrastructures, sectoral differences in B2B solutions, market (de-)concentration processes, or changes of functional employment structures of cities. Key words: Internet, E-commerce, Organizational Change, Firm Location, Spatial Division of Labour

The impact of regionalised RTDI policy measures in Germany: the Network RNA Technologies Berlin (RiNA) as an example

Taking the most popular regional RTDI policy concepts, particularly the network para-digm (Cooke/Morgan 1993) as a starting point, it is the objective of this paper to theo-retically and empirically discuss the necessity and impact of regional or regionalised RTDI policy measures within the context of multi-level governance. Based on the pro-motional measure Netzwerk RNA-Technologien Berlin, initiated by the German Minis-try of Education and Research (BMBF), we shall discuss what kinds of specific policy measures can be undertaken in order to activate and support regionally embedded scientific-technological potentials. In addition, attention will be paid to challenges re-garding the multi-level governance of the funding measure and regional and national effects, particularly within the context of research and networks aspects. What can be seen from the case study is that the coordination of the funding measure proved to be quite challenging. Due to the long-lasting andcomplicated process of setting up the funding measure and the implicit, diverging goals and interests of the key players BMBF, Senate and industry, the resulting network is characterised by unique structural elements which are intertwined or overlap with each other in complex ways. However, due to the policy measure - which supports network activities primarily within coopera-tion projects -, the cooperation intensity of scientific institutions with companies was increased significantly, thus contributing to the goal of fostering the commercial exploitation of research results. --

The Regulation and Privatisation of the Public Water Supply and the Resulting Competitive Effects

Wasserversorgung, Öffentlicher Sektor, Regulierung, Privatisierung, Wettbewerb, Deutschland, Water supply, Public Sector, Regulation, Privatization, Competition, Germany