The question of how new regional growth paths emerge has been raised by many leading economic geographers. From an evolutionary perspective, there are strong reasons to believe that regions are most likely to branch into industries that are technologically related to the preexisting industries in the regions. Using a new indicator of technological relatedness between manufacturing industries, we analyzed the economic evolution of 70 Swedish regions from 1969 to 2002 with detailed plant‐level data. Our analyses show that the long‐term evolution of the economic landscape in Sweden is subject to strong path dependencies. Industries that were technologically related to the preexisting industries in a region had a higher probability of entering that region than did industries that were technologically unrelated to the region's preexisting industries. These industries had a higher probability of exiting that region. Moreover, the industrial profiles of Swedish regions showed a high degree of technological cohesion. Despite substantial structural change, this cohesion was persistent over time. Our methodology also proved useful when we focused on the economic evolution of one particular region. Our analysis indicates that the Linköping region increased its industrial cohesion over 30 years because of the entry of industries that were closely related to its regional portfolio and the exit of industries that were technologically peripheral. In summary, we found systematic evidence that the rise and fall of industries is strongly conditioned by industrial relatedness at the regional level.

The concept of "relatedness" between industries plays an increasingly central role in economics and strategic management. However, relatedness has remained rather elusive in empirical terms. In this article, we investigate relatedness between industries in terms of the extent to which the same human capital can be employed in different industries. In particular, we investigate the skill-relatedness among different industries by investigating labor flows between industries.The data used are Swedish employer linked data on individuals. Our statistical framework assesses the degree to which labor flows between pairs of industries are in excess of expected levels and use this as a quantification of Revealed Skill Relatedness. A network picture of 435 4-digit industries and the relatedness linkages between them shows that the relations among industries are far more complex than the industrial classification system suggests. Moreover, when investigating corporate diversification, we find that firms are far more likely to diversify into industries that are strongly skillrelated to their core activities industries than into unrelated industries.

Who introduces structural change in regional economies: Entrepreneurs or existing firms? And do local or non-local founders of establishments create most novelty in a region? Using matched employeremployee data for the whole Swedish workforce, we determine how unrelated and therefore how novel the activities of different establishments are to a region's industry mix. Up-and downsizing establishments cause large shifts in the local industry structure, but these shifts only occasionally require an expansion of local capabilities because the new activities are often related to existing local activities. Indeed, these incumbents tend to align their production with the local economy, deepening the region's specialization. In contrast, structural change mostly originates via new establishments, especially those with non-local roots. Moreover, although entrepreneurs start businesses more often in activities unrelated to the existing regional economy, new establishments founded by existing firms survive in such activities more often, inducing longer-lasting changes in the region.