Entrepreneurship and business. A regional perspective.

This book provides an almost complete overview of the modern concepts of entrepreneurship and those aspects related to regional economics. It is divided into two parts. Firstly, a historical perspective of the binomial relationship between firms and their regional environments is provided; secondly, an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial behaviours and performances under different conditions is presented. Taken as a whole, the publication is composed of an introduction and fourteen chapters developed into increasingly interesting issues

Exploratory landscape metrics for agricultural sustainability

Socioeconomic growth and urban change have been an increasing concern for decision makers in recent decades. The monitoring, mapping, and analysis of agricultural land use change, especially in areas where urban change has been high, is crucial. The collision between traditional economic activities related to agriculture in tourist areas such as the Algarve and current demand for tourism infrastructures in urban regions is also leading to loss of economic activity. This article uses a combined geographical information system approach with CORINE land cover datasets to perform a Shannon’s diversity index quantifying changes in agricultural areas. The article then expands on the nature of the agricultural changes observed, and offers a multi-temporal assessment by means of landscape metrics in order to understand the shifting land use patterns for the Algarve in land use planning and regional economic equilibrium: a) forest regions become transformed into agricultural areas and agricultural areas become urban; b) areas that are initially agricultural become scattered residential regions created by economic investors; and c) agricultural land use changes have a cyclical nature in which—in the course of the economic recession—such dynamic effects brought about a decrease in tourism and focus on traditional sectors

The impacts of public policies for regional development in Portugal

The major goal of this work is to evaluate the level of effectiveness of those efforts made by the European Commission towards the socio-economic cohesion in Europe by using the single case-study of Portugal. This paper presents the long lasting efforts for regional development in the country by using some data that reports the received aids and their use from 1990 up to 2006. The analysis focuses on the desegregation of such data to regional level. At the same time it is emphasised that, at a time when cohesion is no more the sole goal of European policy, Portugal faces the paradox of trying to raise regional capacities for global competition (without having yet defined what regional strategies are) and, at the same time, wishing to increase its potential scientific and technological capacity, mainly located in the very circumscribed areas of Lisbon and Porto. In order to illustrate such a situation, the exemplar case of the Programme PRIME was presented. This is one of the best examples of the recent support a system, indirectly financed by European founds; PRIME was fully structured as a Portuguese policy instrument to support the modernization of the entrepreneurial tissue at national level. The provided data demonstrates how discussable the level of success of such programme is. Our general conclusions will drive to a dual discussion: the asymmetric use of the financing systems provided by the E.C. and the north/south endemic dichotomy existing in the country generates a path dependency that does not reduce and a trend that should concern Portuguese policy makers deeper then it does

Desenvolvimento regional e inovação empresarial: o impacto do desenvolvimento local nas determinantes de inovação das pequenas empresas

O objetivo deste contributo está bem definido: sob o ponto de vista teórico apresenta-se uma revisão do conceito de proximidade geográfica e da sua influência na dinâmica da inovação. O modelo produtivo pós-fordista serve de base à apresentação e sustenta a análise empírica posterior, feita com base em pequenas empresas. A segunda parte do trabalho traz um modelo que discute as determinantes regionais de inovação com base numa relação biunívoca entre o meio eas empresas. Essas determinantes são observadas para um painel de 323 empresas européias, classificadas e que identificam funções comportamentais dos empresários europeus perante a inovação. O estudo é pioneiro e enquadra-se num trabalho de conjunto desenvolvido pela equipe do Projeto Innovaloc, sendo esta a primeira vez que alguns dos resultados globais do projeto são divulgados em língua portuguesa

The Importance of Clusters for Sustainable Innovation Processes: The Context of Small and Medium Sized Regions

The purpose of the current paper is to provide a critical state-of-the-art review of current research on clusters and its correlation to innovation dynamics in small and medium-sized regions. In particular, we focus on the systematization of the main concepts and theoretical insights that are tributary to the cluster overview in terms of its relevance for the sustainability of the innovation processes, knowledge production and diffusion, which take place inside small and medium-sized regions. The present working paper takes into account the initial studies on English industrial districts (in the nineteenth century), passing through the Italian industrial districts (in the 70s and 80s of the twentieth century), until the modern theories of business clusters and innovation systems. These frameworks constitute the basis of an approach to endogenous development, which gives a central role to the interaction between economic actors, the society and the institutions and to the identification, mobilization and combination of potential resources within a particular geographical area.Cluster; Innovation; Endogenous development; Territory.

Gravitational models and spatial foresight: from agricultural policy to agricultural loss

This paper discusses the issue and proposes a spatial land-cover accounting methodology to assess the impacts and changes occurred in the rural world, Portugal serving as a case study. So, furthermore, this paper aims to respond from a spatial perspective to the following questions: (i) Which are the most significant changes in Portuguese agricultural systems and where did they occur? (ii) Do municipalities in Portugal show dense agricultural regions that were lost, and if so, are they related to urban regions? The methods apply gravitational models to identify the compactness of agricultural areas within the different regions and detect the most significant land use variations. By comparative analyses of the different agricultural land classes, the variations in agricultural land use changes were detected. Also, the comparison of these values in a best-fit with Euclidean distances of artificial land-use questions the consequences of land-use change in Portugal over the last two decades. Finally, this paper demonstrates that the existence of spatial inventories such as the CORINE Land Cover, currently in its third assessment, provides useful information for the assessment of agricultural land-use dynamics

Tipologia de classificação de sistemas territoriais: aplicação às regiões Nuts III portuguesas

O presente artigo baseia-se no recente interesse colocado no papel dos contextos regionais enquanto palcos de actuação dos agentes económicas e da actividade produtiva. A análise empírica realizada baseia-se na selecção de um conjunto de indicadores (Indicadores de Desenvolvimento Local) que permitiu classificar as regiões portuguesas simultaneamente pela sua estrutura produtiva e pelo seu nível de atractividade local. Esta dupla classificação esteve na origem da construção de uma tipologia aplicada às 28 regiões Nuts III de Portugal Continental. A comparação dos resultados com o comportamento destas regiões em termos da performance das suas PME´s (nicho empresarial particularmente dependente da sua envolvente externa) revelou uma clara associação entre as melhores performances e melhores condições de atractividade local.O principal objectivo do trabalho é discutir a hipótese de o território, nas suas várias vertentes, ser factor essencial na criação de condições para a incubação de empresas com comportamentos competitivos. Sobretudo para as pequenas empresas, cuja abertura ao ambiente envolvente é superior, a existência de condições atractivas ao nível local pode ser determinante. Depois de revistas as posições de diversos autores que justificam o interesse colocado na análise da capacidade endógena das regiões, o estudo avança para a sugestão de instrumentos empíricos que permitam analisar quantitativamente os raciocínios expostos

Technological adjustments in textiles, clothes and leather industries: an alternative pathway for competitiveness

Labour-intensive industries, located in medium/high-cost areas are presently facing increasing low-cost competition and outsourcing with tremendous consequences at the regional employment level. The ability to react and technologically adjust to the challenges of these harder market conditions is what determines whether a region is a producer of high value-added goods or just a merely subcontractor. In fact, alternative employment opportunities may arise from complementary areas linked to technological innovations and although one can expect further job decline in manufacturing productive units, it is also expectable that more qualified jobs may be created in complementary areas, such as design, marketing, retail and management. The first objective of the present research is to characterise the process of adoption of new technologies in textile, clothes and leather (TCL) sectors from a group of Southern European regions, characterised by their economic vulnerability and dependence on these sectors. The results revealed that we are in the presence of a process: a) developed internally; b) supplier dominated and c) motivated by the international market. The second objective is to observe the impacts of technical change on local employment structures, namely regarding employment levels and skills. The results indicate that firms investing in new plant and equipment and firms investing in the development of new products are more likely to be increasing employment than the others. Also, firms hiring in these sectors, look for adequate qualifications, in particular regarding the ability to work with internet and marketing technology tools. We conclude that alternative pathways for competitiveness in these industries can be found through higher productivity levels driven from a much reduced workforce, if greater proportion of their turnover could be invested in technology and employment qualification

The complex force field of traditional food systems: scoping the scene

Europe has many market niches where traditional forms of production are still dominant. The geographic variety of Europe certainly stimulates the existence of diverse niches with a clear local colour and identity. Even in the age of mass production and consumption such pockets of often place-bound products have not disappeared. Rather, they are enjoying a comeback, as the public at large is increasingly looking for goods with indigenous or specific qualities. Traditional production modes – as one of the valuable legacies from the past that are socially and economically active throughout history – appear to have a strong chance of survival. History was responsible for generating several – currently – low-tech activities whose survivors still have a place, albeit sometimes modest, in our contemporary society. This holds in particular for the food sector, which has gained much popularity in recent years

Driving forces for innovation: are they measurable?

This paper outlines a synthetic framework based on the concept of the learning process as a driver to redress stakeholders’ attitudes and strategic choices. The discussion is focused on the advantages that may result from institutional proximity, knowledge diffusion and coordination for the specific building up of a territorial knowledge base and the consequent achievement of sustainable regional development. This theoretical framework is applied to an empirical exercise identifying a number of variables supposed to be able to characterise firms and regional performances towards different forms of innovation. Modelling techniques are used to demonstrate that firms’ capacity to innovate is a complex attribute whose determinants change. The results permit to conclude causal links that may be useful for a better understanding of innovation and as support instruments for policy-makers which intend to search for specificities in the regional development process