History Matters: Path dependence and innovation in British city ...

Contents
History Matters
Path dependence and innovation in British city-regions
Part 1: Introduction 10
1.1 History matters 10
1.2 Thinking about the development of cities: path dependent evolution 12
1.3 The application of long-term historic analysis to understanding the 15
development of city-regional economies
1.4 Outline of the study 18
Part 2: Path dependence and innovation across 12 British cities 20
2.1 The bases of path dependence and new path creation 20
2.2 Selection of leading and lagging city-regions 23
2.3 Path dependent development in old and new industrial areas is diverging 23
2.4 Absorptive capacity in the form of knowledge assets is one of the 25
bases of divergence between city-regional economies
2.5 Local innovation systems are the dynamic generators of novelty, 30
change and growth in their local economies
2.6 New pathways are created by interactions between absorptive 31
capacity and innovation
2.7 Conclusions 33
Part 3: Cambridge and Swansea: contrasting path dependent economies 36
3.1 A Tale of Two Cities 36
3.2 Path dependent development 36
3.3 Absorptive capacity: firms need sources of new external knowledge 45
3.4 Local innovation systems: the creation, adoption and commercialisation 53
of new knowledge
3.5 Concluding remarks 59
Part 4: Why do cities differ in innovative performance? Conclusions and some 62
lessons for policy
4.1 Introduction 62
4.2 Knowledge, absorptive capacity and local innovation systems 62
4.3 Positive and negative path dependence: the cases of Cambridge 64
and Swansea
4.4 Policy lessons 66
Appendix 1: Maps 69
Appendix 2: Secondary data indicators 80
Appendix 3: References 91
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