Community can be a group of people sharing a locale, or just with common interests. Ecologists define community as, “an assemblage of interacting populations occupying a given area” (community, n.d.). It is both geographic and social. Human community is a function of interacting in/with a region.
Florida (1995) argues, “regions themselves are becoming focal points of knowledge-creation and learning … [that] function as collectors and repositories of knowledge and ideas, providing an underlying environment or infrastructure that facilitates the flow of knowledge, ideas, and learning” (pg. 528). Learning is a function of place and the built environment, and is a socioeconomic phenomenon:
Learning regions provide the crucial inputs for knowledge-intensive economic organization to flourish: a manufacturing infrastructure of interconnected vendors and suppliers; a human infrastructure that can produce knowledge workers, facilitates the development of a team orientation, and which is organized around life-long learning; a physical and communication infrastructure which facilitates and supports constant sharing of information, electronic exchange of data and information, just-in-time delivery of goods and services, and integration into the global economy; and capital allocation and industrial governance systems attend to the needs of knowledge-intensive organizations. (Florida, 1995, pg. 34)
The learning region paradigm focuses on the networks or associational characteristics of a region in which firms are embedded, subsuming individual entrepreneurs and workers to consider how they function together rather than operate independently (Granovetter, 1985; Morgan, 1997; Saxenian, 2000).
Let’s consider how some scholars think this works.
Dynamic social networks with abundant weak ties within regions allow for knowledge spillovers and new opportunities for interactive learning. Broader extra-local networks bring new capabilities, ideas, and technologies into regions (MacKinnon, Cumbers, and Chapman, 2002). Both types of ties reduce transaction costs for knowledge as well as other resources, contributing to innovation by making it easy to connect disparate chunks of information into usable and useful knowledge.
Embeddedness must be balanced by autonomy or regions can get locked into a particular technology, following it from boom to bust. “It is the type of network relationships between organizations (firms, institutions) rather than their spatial clustering alone that determines the ability of regions to adapt” (Boschma and Lambooy, 1999, pg. 393).
Dynamism in social networks—lots of weak ties and shifting relationships—allows clusters (or the communities or regions in which they operate) to diversify, reinvent and revitalize themselves, and avoid technologically determined path dependency. Stronger, more stable ties, particularly to and through institutions, provide governance and reduce uncertainty, making it more practical for actors to take risks (Morgan, 1997).
Cooke (2002) suggests that regional learning is essentially collaborative economic action by a localized socioeconomic system in response to natural socioeconomic disequilibrium. This requires social connections that are dynamic yet resilient: “knowledge is in the network,” Cooke (2002) maintains, “because each move in the interactive innovation process requires learning from other than those involved in the preceding move” (pp. 2 – 3, emphasis in the original).
Innovation is an interactive learning process, maintains Morgan (1997), with powerful feedback loops incorporating common and tacit knowledge, “that is shaped by a variety of institutional routines and social conventions” (Morgan, 1997, pg. 493).
Brown and Duguid (2002) maintain that the only means of constructing regional advantage is to capitalize on local knowledge that is simultaneously “leaky” and “sticky,” which inevitably leaks out of particularly organizations but sticks in a particular region because it inheres to embedded boundary spanning local social networks.
Also consider what may be called “optimal proximity,” presented by Boschma (2005): A loosely coupled system, balancing local “buzz” with extra-local linkages, combining community and market relations, and providing institutional checks and balances, to create a common knowledge base with diverse but complementary capabilities. This involves cognitive, organizational, social, and institutional capabilities across and within geographical limits.
Morgan (1997), Brown and Duguid (2002), Cooke (2002), and Boschma (2005) make essentially the same point: Sustained innovation capacity comes from leveraging unique local human assets for acquiring relevant global human assets and constantly recombining them.
The connections that comprise community–interactions and space, interests and place–determine what the connected see as desirable and practical; shared vision.
References:
Boschma, R. (2005). “Proximity and Innovation: A Critical Assessment,” Regional Studies, 39(1): 61–74.
Boschma, R. and Lambooy, J (1999). “The prospects of an adjustment policy based on collective learning in old industrial regions,” GeoJournal. 49(4): 391-399.
Brown, J. S. and Duguid, P. (2002). Local Knowledge: Innovation in the Networked Age. Management Learning, 33(4), 427-438.
community. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved December 17, 2010, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/community
Cooke, P. (2002)
Knowledge Economics: Clusters, learning, and cooperative advantage. London and New York: Routledge.
Cooke, P. and Leysdesdorff, L. (2005). “Regional Development in the Knowledge-Based Economy: The Construction of Regional Advantage.” Journal of Technology Transfer. 31(1): 5-15.
Florida, R. (1995). “Toward the Learning Region,” Futures. 27(5): 527-536.
Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91, 481-510.
MacKinnon, D., Cumbers, A, and Chapman, K. (2002). Learning, innovation and regional development: a critical appraisal of recent debates. Progress in Human Geography, 26(3), pp. 293–311
Morgan, K. (1997). “The Learning Region: Institutions, Innovation and Regional Renewal.” Regional Studies. 31(5): 491-503.
Saxenian, A. (1994). Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Tags: Boschma, Brown, Cooke, Duguid, Florida, innovation, Morgan, regional learning
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