Firms and the ‘Global Knowledge Economy’ Beyond the Global North

• Thilo Lang – Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (IfL), University of Leipzig – T_Lang@leibniz-ifl.de
• Robert Hassink – Kiel University
• Javier Revilla Diez – University of Cologne

The global knowledge economy can be seen as a dominant representation of the global economic order (Roberts 2009, Moisio 2018), and an always unfinished project of producing socio-spatial relations (Marung and Middell 2019).

In this session, we aim to challenge the very idea of firm integration into the global economy and the ways we understand knowledge as a fundamental driver of innovation. While the dominant understandings of both, the global knowledge economy and innovation are based on a ‘Northern’ conceptual bias, we invite for empirical and conceptual reflections on more diverse readings and imaginations of the global economy and firm innovation beyond the global North.

We suggest that the power-geometries (Massey 1999) inscribed in to-date core-periphery relations at multiple scales hegemonize particular forms of global integration while others are marginalised. This particularly affects firms in ‘peripheral’ locations beyond the Global North (cf. Vanolo 2010) and beyond agglomeration economies (Shearmur, Carrincazeaux, Doloreux 2016).

How do internationally active and innovative companies from such ‘double-peripheries’ emerge and integrate into this global knowledge economy or construct their own understandings of potentially more diverse (global) economic orders?

For this special session, we invite particularly conceptual and empirical contributions discussing:

• how global (knowledge) economies are perceived, re-produced or challenged from perspectives beyond the Global North
• innovation activities in locally rooted and internationally successful enterprises in ‘double peripheries’
• empirical results on firm innovation, internationalisation and the geography of innovation in non-core economies, with a particular focus on the Global South and East
• the emergence of transnational enterprises/ born globals beyond the Global North
• how the notions of catching-up and leapfrogging re-produce or challenge pre-defined imaginations of development
• post-colonial economic geography perspectives allowing for diverse economic practices
• researcher positionalities in the field

References

• Massey D. (1999) Imagining Globalization: Power-Geometries of Time-Space. In: Brah, A., Hickman, M.J., an Ghaill, M.M. (eds.) Global Futures. Explorations in Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London.
• Middell, M. and Marung, S. (2019). Spatial Formats under the Global Condition. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, Oldenbourg.
• Moisio, S. (2018). Geopolitics of the knowledge-based economy. Routledge, London.
• Roberts, J. (2009). The global knowledge economy in question. Critical perspectives on international business. 5(4):285-303.
• Shearmur, R., Carrincazeaux, C., Doloreux, D. (2016, eds.). Handbook on the Geographies of Innovation. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
• Vanolo, A. (2010). The Border Between Core and Periphery: Geographical Representations of the World System. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie, 101(1), 26–36.