Skip Navigation


Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access originally published online on May 10, 2005
Journal of Economic Geography 2005 5(5):523-543; doi:10.1093/jeg/lbh072
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
5/5/523    most recent
lbh072v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Gordon, I. R.
Right arrow Articles by McCann, P.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Related Collections
Right arrow R30 - General
Right arrow O31 - Innovation and Invention: [...]
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?


© The Author (2005) Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Innovation, agglomeration, and regional development

Ian R. Gordon* and Philip McCann**

* Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. email <i.r.gordon{at}lse.ac.uk>
** Department of Economics, The University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AW, UK. email <p.mccann{at}reading.ac.uk>

This paper provides a critical examination of the widely disseminated view that innovation in all or most activities is favoured by certain common characteristics in the local ‘milieu’, involving a cluster of many small firms benefiting from flexible inter-firm alliances, supported by mutual information exchanges of both an informal and formal nature. The general applicability of this model, and the localness of crucial linkages, is questioned initially on the basis of a review of different hypotheses about the geography of innovation. Moreover, examination of new survey evidence from a large number of firms in the London conurbation suggests that the importance of specifically local informal information spillovers for successful innovation is very much more limited than has been suggested, as are the supposed advantages of firm smallness.

Keywords: Innovation, agglomeration, industrial clusters, innovative milieux,
JEL classifications: O310, R300
Date submitted: 27 October 2003     Date accepted: 7 February 2005


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 OXF ECON PAPHome page
A. Faggian and P. McCann
Human capital flows and regional knowledge assets: a simultaneous equation approach
Oxf. Econ. Pap., July 1, 2006; 58(3): 475 - 500.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.