ESR 12

Project: Dynamic perspectives on knowledge exchange configurations in innovation processes. Business practices from East Germany and Estonia.

ESR 12: Martin Graffenberger (Host: IfL)

Description: Within the debate on economic peripheralisation processes, innovation activities take on a focal role. A lack of innovation is regarded an essential driver of economic peripheralisation processes which is why innovation activities are also deemed a central strategy for responding to peripheralisation processes and for inducing regional change. Previous studies have identified that businesses generate innovations despite operating within and from seemingly unfavourable socio-spatial environments. By adopting an understanding of innovation that emphasizes its knowledge-driven, interactive and evolutionary nature, the project aims to further investigate the mostly unaddressed question of how innovation activities come into being and evolve over time – placing a particular spatial focus on peripheral regions. To adequately address the project’s guiding interest its empirical strategy will be based on actor-centred and micro-level approaches.