Sources of Regional Resilience in the Danish ICT Sector

In this paper the use of the term “resilience” is discussed and a definition for use in quantitative studies of industrial evolution is suggested. Resilience is the ability of an industry in a region to exploit the possibilities arising from external events and adapt to thrive under new selection environments. An econometric analysis is undertaken to uncover the effects of the change in selection environment that the ICT industry faced from the burst of the ICT bubble in the year 2000. It is shown that some characteristics of regional industry structure are associated with growth over the whole period while other characteristics have varying effects pre and post burst. Special attention is given to the responsiveness of growth to the evolution of sales of ICT goods and services in Denmark and it is found that the industry structures that restrain growth also are the ones, which make the regional industry better able to exploit changes in sales at the national level.Resilience; Business cycle; ICT sector; Regional growth