Regional Development

The notion of ‘region’ may span from a 10,000 squaremile territory in the Arctic with a handful of inhabitants to ‘the region of Asia’. For the notion of ‘region’ to acquire meaning, it is necessary to link it to specific discourses. For action research, there are, in particular, two perspectives that have been important: one emanating from internal differences within nation states and one from the need to introduce several levels of organization to build the bridge between local developments and broader waves of change.

Differences between units that live under the same general conditions have for a long time attracted interest in social and economic research. The interest in regional perspectives emerging in recent decades can, however, to a large extent, be brought back to Italy and to the differences between the North and the South. Against the stagnant South, there is a North characterized by affluence, modern business and administration; a high rate of innovation and a leading-edge position internationally within areas like design, fashion and sophisticated industrial products. How can these differences exist side by side?

There are many possible explanations, from history and culture to technical skills. Widening the perspective to include differences within other countries as well, much of the attention has come to focus on knowledge and, in particular, the notion of surplus knowledge. With new knowledge continuously available, enterprises can continuously renew their products, [Page 679]services and processes and, consequently, develop and grow. New enterprises will more easily be created, and enterprises from other places will move in because there are knowledge resources available for exploitation. Over time, the result will be affluence and the ability to finance more knowledge creation and strengthen the spiral. In many versions, this is the basic assumption behind the notion of the knowledge-driven economy.

Why should the search for exploitable knowledge lead to regional organization? Many enterprises are too small to directly benefit from global sources and are in need of local mediators, such as local universities or other gatekeepers. With a growing emphasis on experience-based knowledge, there emerges a need for social mechanisms that can transfer this kind of knowledge between enterprises, with an ensuing demand for direct contacts. The use of knowledge is not only a question of identifying relevant sources, it is also a question of the reliability of the sources. This leads to the issue of trust, an issue that has gained prime importance in the innovation context. The generation of most forms of trust will benefit from direct contact. In sum, a common vision today of an ‘innovative environment’ is an area where a number of enterprises can be found, in association with institutions of higher learning, with providers of risk capital and with public authorities intent on promoting innovation, all linked to each other in the form of various arenas for co-operation. Otherwise, they vary from, say, Silicon Valley, with several million inhabitants, to regions with maybe a hundred thousand. There is no sharp boundary between region and other social collectivities, such as community.

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