Modes of knowledge migration: Regional assimilation of knowledge and the politics of bringing knowledge into the region

Abstract

The dynamics of complex processes of knowledge migration are strongly influenced by the receptiveness of the territorial background such as nations, regions or locations. With regard to a regional assimilation of new knowledge the processes of knowledge migration offer several opportunities for regional policy-making that aim at bringing knowledge into the region. In order to understand knowledge beyond its “visible” or “measurable” aspects, a further cultural element has to be added to the standard set of socio-economic indicators, which constitute the collective explicit knowledge in a region. This cultural element, in contrast, refers to the collective tacit knowledge dimension in regional development that allows us to understand the prospects for a regional assimilation of new knowledge and to explain socio-economic variations among regions beyond the mechanical logic of statistics-based rankings and foresights. Regional knowledge culture is therefore conceived as the product of collective explicit and collective implicit (or tacit) knowledge components.

Notes

1. The situation in international biotechnology is characterized by a concentration of biotech companies and research institutes at a limited number of locations with a significant level of cooperations between these locations. This spatial expression of an innovative industry can be understood as Archipelago Biotechnology being made up of a network of international islands of innovation. As an important part of this network the German Archipelago Biotechnology is based on the locations of Greater Berlin, the North-German city triangle Braunschweig-Hannover-Göttingen, the Rhine-Ruhr Area, the Rhine-Main Area, the Rhine-Neckar Triangle and Greater Munich. Additionally, Jena has grown since 1990 into the most important location for biotechnology in eastern Germany. These German islands form part of a wider (west-) European Archipelago Biotechnology with Greater London and East Anglia, the Scottish Belt, the Île de France as the dominating French location, the Öresund region, the Spanish axis Barcelona-Madrid-Seville, and the Dutch Ranstadt region. Likewise, a structurally similar US American Archipelago Biotechnology casted in a two coast country situation comprises Boston, MA, New York City Conurbation, Pennsylvania with Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the US-Capitol Region (Maryland and Washington, D.C.) and Research Triangle Park (RTP) region in North Carolina orientated to the Atlantic coast and San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles-San Diego Conurbation on the Pacific coast (cf. Bastian & Hilpert, 2006).

2. Among the industrialized counties of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) world significant differences exist with regard to the institutional embeddedness of market economies. Such differences relate to the regulation of labour markets, education systems, social security systems and to the enterprises (corporate governance) and are discussed in the framework of “varieties of capitalism” (Soskice & Hall, 2001).

3. This metropolitan area, extending from the north-west of London through Germany to Milan, traditionally has been a breeding place for entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe. Only recently, the concept has been widened by referring to an emerging European “Sunbelt” from Milan to Valencia and—in anticipation of potential gains from European Union eastern enlargement—the “Yellow Banana” from Paris to Warsaw as further growth axes of the future (cf. Hospers, 2005).

4. In the UK, it is commonly referred to as the north–south divide—though in reality it is one between London and the south-east of England on the one hand and the rest of the UK on the other. Only the Scottish belt with a centre in Edinburgh has succeeded in developing a proper profile for knowledge intensive industries.

5. Deep knowledge refers to causal explanations that go back to natural laws, whereas the surface knowledge is represented by practical rules that can be acquired from people performing efficiently a given task (as human experts). The notions come close to the opposition of theory and practice.

6. While procedural knowledge is knowledge expressed in expert systems by rules or, in organizational life, by procedures, declarative knowledge, in contrast, refers more to descriptive knowledge represented by objects or agents in new programming languages.

7. A fourth dimension, knowledge migration through time[0] primarily builds on two different modes: (i) inter-generational migration of knowledge conceived as tradition of knowledge and (ii) the integrated concept of invention, oblivion and re-invention. While the first concept arises from a conscious and intended continuation of knowledge in dedicated institutions, the second, in contrast, includes all forms of unintended knowledge development based on chance or random. Of course, the aspect of knowledge discontinuation also occurs in the process of tradition as the rejection and oppression of new knowledge in the pre-industrial history of Western Europe illustrates as well as current discourses on technology risks.

8. The idea of attitudes differs from the concept of mentality often used in academia and is rather designed as being compound of orientations such as openness towards changes and influences from outside, willingness to collaborate for a joint management of socio-economic change, ability to catch up with changes in organization, readiness of political decision-makers to pursue enabling approaches, or capacity of research structures to contribute to successful innovation. Where such orientations can be found in the three decisive areas of regional industrial, research and government systems, the nature of socio-economic development can be regarded as being more dynamic—given there are similar initial conditions/situations—than in regions where these orientations remain weak or largely absent. The respective cultural settings are made up of a catalogue of attitudes (Hilpert, 2006).

9. The biotechnology industry, for instance, is primarily made up of small, single-product start-up companies, a highly educated workforce and a close relationship between basic and applied science in the field. Furthermore, it has been argued that “because of the close association between academic laboratories and industrial laboratories, biotechnology companies developed a culture that borrows several features of the university setting. The academic culture in which scientists train men and women who are accustomed to working in highly focused, small, independent laboratories. Although the university itself is a large institution, the laboratories are highly autonomous, self-funded functional units. Most laboratory funding is from outside the university (…)” (Boyd, 1997, p. 3).

10. See also the technology park in Bari as a similar example for southern Italy (Berra, 1991).