Regional industrial restructuring: Asset modification and alignment for digitalization

This paper provides a conceptual framework to understand the innovation‐based restructuring of industries in a regional context. The framework includes how firms create new assets, reuse existing assets, and overcome hampering barriers to support innovation processes. The framework also covers how such asset modifications take place at the innovation system level. A core argument is that innovation activity is strengthened and regional restructuring supported when firms’ internal assets are aligned with assets at the regional innovation system level. We illustrate the framework with empirical examples of how digitalization as an innovation process takes place in firms in traditional manufac…

Differentiated regional entrepreneurial discovery processes. A conceptual discussion and empirical illustration from three emergent clusters

The paper aims to contribute to better understanding of entrepreneurial discovery processes and regional industrial growth by examining (1) how different regional contexts affect entrepreneurial di...

Entrepreneurial innovativeness and growth ambitions in thick vs. thin regional innovation systems

Research in economic geography has paid increasing attention to regional innovation systems (RISs) as a potential vehicle for growth and development. Yet despite an increasing amount of research st...

Cluster development and regional industrial restructuring: agency and asset modification

The paper presents a novel theoretical framework to analyse the emergence and growth of industrial clusters. The framework focuses on the role of change agency for the modification of assets that i...

Regional Industrial Restructuring

This chapter studies regional industrial restructuring and focuses on the role of the ecosystem for restructuring. The chapter examines more precisely how various types of ecosystems hold different preconditions for regional industrial change. The question is how various stages of the restructuring process are affected by the ecosystem. The chapter moves beyond traditional evolutionary economic geography by examining a wide range of actors, mechanisms, and outcomes. A particular focus is placed on the importance of asset modification for regional industrial restructuring. The chapter concludes by suggesting that thin regional innovation systems (RISs) mainly support the reuse of existing as…

Towards a more sustainable process industry: A single case study of restructuring within the Eyde process industry cluster

Due to increased attention on environmental issues, industrial sustainable restructuring is high on the research agenda. The article adds to the literature through an analysis of a restructuring process within a Norwegian process industry cluster. By introducing an analytical framework combining the concepts of entrepreneurial discovery process and path dependency theory, the article offers a deeper understanding of the role of various types of actors in processes of restructuring. The authors categorise the actors as either firm-level entrepreneurs or system-level entrepreneurs on the basis of their motivation. While the former are motivated mainly by firm success, the latter find their mo…

Linking content and technology: on the geography of innovation networks in the Bergen media cluster

This paper deals with the geography of innovation networks and analyses combinatorial knowledge dynamics from a single cluster perspective. Addressing firms in the media cluster in Bergen, Norway, we examine how and from where companies acquire and combine different types of knowledge for their innovation activities. The empirical analysis, which is based on structured interviews with 22 media companies, identifies two main types of cluster firms: media content providers that rely heavily on symbolic knowledge and media technology providers that draw mostly on synthetic knowledge. Even though they draw on different knowledge bases, the two types of firms are strongly interlinked in their in…

New Regional Industrial Path Development: Entrepreneurs, Knowledge Exchange, and Regional Contexts

New regional industrial path development and innovation networks in times of economic crisis

This paper presents novel research on how exogenous shocks and economic crises affect innovation, knowledge networks, and new path development in regions. Conceptually, we take a regional innovation systems perspective which views new path development as the outcome of innovation and knowledge exchange between firms and other actors, facilitated by a common institutional framework. Empirically, we draw on interviews and network data from the oil and gas industry in southern Norway. Following a long period of prosperity, the industry was hit by the oil price shock in 2014 and entered an economic crisis. The findings suggest that the shock triggered the firms to commit even more forcefully to…

Asset modification for regional industrial restructuring: digitalization of the culture and experience industry and the healthcare sector

This paper researches how firm- and system-level asset modification and alignment underpin and direct new path development from digitalization. It suggests that asset reuse mostly promotes path extension or path upgrading, while asset creation and asset destruction will be more evident in the process of path emergence. The empirics support asset modification as a key mechanism for regional restructuring from digitalization, but suggest that the typology should be more nuanced. Specifically, the empirics demonstrate asset upgrading as a key mechanism. publishedVersion

Unravelling green regional industrial path development: Regional preconditions, asset modification and agency

Abstract Regions across the world are searching for ways to fashion new green growth paths and to promote green shifts in mature industries. The article aims to explore conceptually and based on illustrative empirical examples from the literature how green restructuring unfolds in regions. We propose a framework that explicates how regional preconditions in form of pre-existing industrial structures, organisational support structures, institutional set-ups and natural assets are transformed into various types of green path development through agentic processes of asset modification.