Co-evolution in contemporary economic geography: towards a theoretical framework

ABSTRACT

Although co-evolution is a key concept in contemporary economic geography because of its relevance for achieving deep contextualization and sound policy recommendations, it has not largely been taken up in recent empirical work. This is partly due to the lack of a comprehensive theoretical framework. This paper develops such a framework in which two key issues are stressed: the multi-scalarity of co-evolving populations and the nature of change. Moreover, an agenda is set for more theoretically informed future research on co-evolution.

KEYWORDS:

• co-evolution
• economic geography
• theoretical framework
• multi-scalarity
• nature of change

JEL:

• R
• R1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the workshop on ‘Evolution, Co-evolution and Regional Innovation Processes’, Heilbronn, Germany, 29 June 2017. The authors are grateful to Michaela Trippl, Camilla Chlebna, Alexandra Frangenheim, Fabian Faller and two anonymous reviewers for useful comments made on an earlier version of this paper. The usual disclaimer, however, applies.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Huiwen Gong http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4764-6867

Robert Hassink http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7524-4577

Notes

1. In the past, co-evolution has been implicitly adopted in the literature on territorial innovation models (Moulaert & Sekia, 2003) in general, and on regional innovation systems, in particular (Cooke, 2004).

2. For institutional dynamics, radical changes happen more often in formal institutions (e.g., policies and regulations) than in informal institutions (cognitive, normative), as the latter are normally historically based and collectively shared, and thus are less likely to change overnight.