Cluster Performance reconsidered: Structure, Linkages and Paths in the German Biotechnology Industry, 1996-2003

This paper addresses the evolution of biotechnology clusters in Germany between 1996 and 2003, paying particular attention to their respective composition in terms of venture capital, basic science institutions and biotechnology firms. Drawing upon the significance of co-location of "money and ideas", the literature stressing the importance of a cluster's openness and external linkages, and the path dependency debate, the paper aims to analyse how certain cluster characteristics correspond with its overall performance. After identifying different cluster types, we investigate their internal and external interconnectivity in comparative manner and draw on changes in cluster composition. Our results indicate that the structure, i.e. to which group the cluster belongs, and the openness towards external knowledge flows deliver merely unsystematic indications with regard to a cluster's overall success. Its ability to change composition towards a more balanced ratio of science and capital over time, on the other hand, turns out as a key explanatory factor. Hence, the dynamic perspective proves effective illuminating cluster growth and performance, where our explorative findings provide a promising avenue for further evolutionary research

Potentiale und Grenzen umweltbasierter Konflikttransformation: Erkenntnisse aus dem Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel

Der Beitrag untersucht am Beispiel des Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel, wie Friedensbildungsmaßnahmen mit Bezug zu Umweltthemen die Sichtweisen auf einen Konflikt bei Akteuren auf Graswurzelebene verändern können. Ausgangsüberlegung ist dabei, Umwelt nicht nur als Teil des Konfliktes zu interpretieren, sondern als konfliktneutralen Katalysator einzusetzen. Die auf dieser Basis erreichte Veränderung der Wahrnehmung des Konflikts wird in Form von konstruierten Raumbildern konzeptualisiert. Die empirischen Einblicke zeigen zum einen die Bedeutung von physischen wie sozialen Orten und Räumen als Rahmen für die konstruktive Auseinandersetzung. Zum anderen lässt sich in Bezug auf die Konfliktwahrnehmung ein Bruch zwischen einer positiven Veränderung des Bildes der anderen Gruppe und der persistenten Konstruktion des Erbes ableiten

Bicycle-sharing systems in an alternative/diverse economy perspective: a sympathetic critique

This contribution puts bicycle-sharing systems (BSSs) as a rather recent, environmentally friendly form of urban mobility in the context of broader societal changes. More specifically, we discuss to what extent BSS and their various modes of organisation can be regarded as an “alternative” consumption practice, explicitly designed to deliver more social just outcomes, taking the diverse economy framework of Gibson-Graham as a key tool of analysis. Our examination unfolds a range of limitations of BSSs for (strong) sustainable development, but also a number of obvious and less obvious prospects and opportunities

The green economy and post-growth regimes: Opportunities and challenges for economic geography

While mainstream economic geography is doing increasing research on green manufacturing and services, with a few notable exceptions, its predominant conceptual approaches to emerging modes of economic orientation continue to examine economic transitions somewhat unreflexively within the context of traditional growth paradigms. The aim of this article is to explore and critically examine neoliberal discourses on the green economy and smart growth by exploring contributions to debates on green economics proposed by ideas linked to post-growth economies. Based on studies by scholars such as Tim Jackson and Serge Latouche, the article examines the contours of debates on post-growth, décroissance (de-growth) and prosperity without growth. We begin by examining growth debates and existing contributions by economic and other geographers to the exploration of alternatives to conventional growth-centred economics. We then identify some emergent spatial facets of post-growth transitions and utilize these to explore potential research topics and opportunities for empirical and conceptual contributions by economic geographers to academic and societal debates on economic transitions and post-growth paradigms. Particular attention is paid to approaches currently discussed in economic geography, such as socio-technical transition studies

Geographies of knowledge-creating services and urban policies in the Greater Munich

The interpretative analysis of the new knowledge economy, through the Munich case study, is part of a research that is located in a relatively unexplored area of urban milieu studies and has been carried out in strong sinergy with a group of scholars from various disciplines. This research, in investigating the activities that characterize the tertiary transiction of the urban economy, raises interesting epistemological, methodological and normative questions starting from the classification of knowledge and innovation generating activities (kcs-knowledge generating acrivities), in this creative sense, which is based on a logical-formal model. The research puts different perspectives in tension and in the case-studies seizes the opportunity to adjust the specific classification, adapting it to the contexts. It proposes and empirically tests an interpretative model of the relationships between business, city and territory and defines synthetic policy lines at the regulatory level. In this perspective, the Durkheimian concept of generative milieu is updated with particular reference to collective learning and an analytical frame is provided for recognizing milieus on three scales (dialogical, organizational and urban). The test and case studies concern the third type of milieu. Significant are the implications at the regulatory level emerging in the case studies. They refer to the possibility of a new economic policy, the emergence of new figures and functions and the possibilities of intervening on the milieu and landscape also with planning tools, as confirmed by some tests, in particular in the case of Munich. Some empirical evidence of the concept of milieu is proposed, in support of the general hypothesis, with spatial classifications of knowledge service activities in some European cities and metropolitan areas. The response provided by the empirical exercises is differentiated and a certain interpretative effort was required to recognize the milieu specific capacity to generate knowledge. Interesting references are the physical-functional and policy characteristics that can be used as a proxy for conditions and opportunities. The peculiarity of Munich case is that it is an alpha-city and a strongly connected node according to the Global and World Cities Research Network (GaWC). Effective urban planning, infrastructural and transport policies together with aggressive territorial marketing have strengthened the polycentric structure, qualifying it as a reputational node. The contiguity of industrial decision-making centers, the presence of financial institutions and the supply of logistics services have created favorable localization conditions for the post-industrial transition. It was driven by aggressive policies (high-tech and offensive clusters) that favored the formation of innovative clusters with strong direct interaction, often informal and face-to-face. It is highlight how the localization strategies of Kcs in the Munich metropolitan area have activated a sort of triple helix, an effective collaboration between private individuals, public institutions, universities and research centers, transforming the territory concerned into a powerful policy-making machine, with significant socio-spatial implications. This policy-making machine, at the basis of a strategic design that goes beyond the city and its metropolitan area, would favor the creation of significant structural conditions that can be interpreted differently by companies. Compared to the other tests, the data on Kcs (core, core related and collateral) have been enriched by information on annual turnover, an interesting proxy on the reactivity of the business system to the economic cycle The interest of the results does not only concern the spatial distribution of the most innovative clusters, but some collateral effects. As was to be expected, the Kcs cores are concentrated in an inner-city that is only apparently homogeneous from a physical-functional point of view, where type-morphological stratifications of historical interest overlap, dense and lively urban fabrics, with dynamic socio-economic relationships. In part counterbalanced by planning strategies, this localization pattern did not create social polarization, but new forms of stratification with demographic substitution and variation of the age pyramids. The presence of local capacity building atmosphere is also hypothesized, as in the case of neo-artisanal activities and the formation of new forms of local competition