Geographies of Knowledge Formation in Firms

Abstract

This paper focuses on the spatial dimension of learning in firms. It works with important new insights in economic geography that stress the role of spatial proximity and territorial embeddedness in the process of knowledge formation, but it also seeks to go beyond them by recognizing learning based on relations at a distance. The paper defines space as a network of both contiguous and non‐contiguous relations of varying length, shape and duration, where knowing can involve all manner of spatial mobilizations, including placements of task teams in neutral spaces, face‐to‐face encounters, global networks held together by travel and virtual communications, flows of ideas and information through the supply chain, and trans‐corporate thought experiments and symbolic rituals.

Keywords:

• communities
• competencies
• spatial knowledge
• situated practices

Acknowledgements

This paper largely reproduces a chapter on spaces of learning in the authors' book Architectures of Knowledge, published by Oxford University Press in early 2004 (Amin and Cohendet, 2004). The authors are grateful to the editors of this special issue for inviting this submission, but remain concerned about the high degree of overlap with already published material.