In this paper, the author argues that path creation in regions could be connected to extra-regional firms, networks, and knowledge . However, since the 1990s, the field of evolutionary economic geography has emphasized the importance of endogenous factors in explaining mechanisms of growth and decline. In the debate on path development, there has been strong trust in internal regional processes, where regional innovation systems, related variety, and regional branching have been important sources of new growth patterns. Consequently, the anchoring of multinational corporations in regions as new sources of regional growth and firms’ strategic behavior has received less attention in the evolutionary economic geography discourse. There is less understanding of path creation as “outside-in” transplantation and of the role of extra-regional sources of knowledge and new path development. Accordingly, as peripheral regions often lack notions of relatedness within economic sectors, they depend on exogenous sources of new path development. By applying a set of quantitative and qualitative data from the buildup of a new offshore cluster in the petroleum sector off the coast of Finnmark in Northern Norway, the author suggests that firm behavior within a multiscalar network of actors plays a dominant strategic role in the development of new paths in the periphery. He argues that exogenous development impulses in the form of a combination of multinational corporations, state policies of local content, and the inflow of new knowledge through the inward transplantation of firms from outside can initiate new industrial paths. Thus, the author raises fundamental questions about the applicability of models of endogenous path creation in peripheral regions and suggests a new analytical framework for understanding how the entry of strategic firms connects with different regional paths.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

It is commonly argued in the literature on regional innovation that regions must continuously develop new economic activities to compensate for economic decline. If a region manages to diversify from an existing path, it can sustain long-term economic development. One of the measures taken to increase these types of opportunities and to avoid lock-in is to stimulate a closer relationship and collaboration between universities and industry partners. However, we know little about the formation and investigation of successful university-industry relationships in regions outside metropolitan areas. This paper seeks to fill this research gap by investigating how different dimensions of cognitive, organizational, social and geographical proximity facilitate or hinder innovation processes in collaborations between industry and universities in peripheral regions. We find that social proximity, combined with high organizational proximity, overcomes the barriers presented by low geographical proximity. Social proximity compensates for thin regional structures with few high-tech firms, a lack of knowledge producers and a weak support system. An important policy implication is that stimulating collaboration within areas of expertise possessed by university and industry partners create potential for innovation.