Questioning the ‘Periphery Label’ in Economic Geography

Abstract

Firm innovation is widely considered an effective means to facilitate and strengthen regional economic development, especially for cities and dynamic agglomerations. In turn, reduced innovation activities are regarded a critical element of missing economic dynamics in peripheral regions. Against this background, the paper offers a critical reading on how peripheral regions and their actors are typically portrayed in established accounts on the interconnections between innovation and space. Thereby, recent propositions to adopt more nuanced understandings that expand the prevailing ‘core region thinking’ are taken into account. The article provides two in-depth cases which explore innovation projects of firms located in peripheral Estonian regions. The analysis focuses on practices and strategies, which these firms mobilize as part of their innovation activities. Findings reveal that firms actively involve diverse partners from multiple spatial scales, respond to structural constrains of local contexts and in several aspects even benefit from their location. Firms actively shape their own, distinct environments relevant for innovation, thereby mediating potential structural constraints arising from peripheral contexts. In line with these findings, it is argued to adopt conceptual and methodological insights from relational thinking in economic geography more rigorously.

Biographical Note

Lukas Vonnahme (SFB 1199 & Leibniz- Institut für Länderkunde)

Having studied Human Geography in Marburg, Lund and Frankfurt from 2008 to 2014, Vonnahme joined the Leibniz-Institute for Regional Geography Leipzig in 2014. After he worked for bwcon GmbH, a regional economic development agency in Stuttgart in 2015, Vonnahme obtained his current position as a Researcher and PhD Candidate within the project “Peripheral but Global: World Market Leaders outside of Agglomerations”, which is part of the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199: “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition”. His research interests include regional economic development, processes of knowledge creation in space, and innovation management.

Martin Graffenberger (Leibniz-Insitut für Länderkunde)