温州鞋革产业中小企业集群创新系统 第2页
case of Route 128. A large literature on the relationship between innovation, research universities and regional development has been spawned (Saxenian, 1985; Castells & Hall, 1994; Storper, 1993).
Another direction of research has been in pursuit of the notion of an innovative milieu, the key theoretical concept of the GREMI (Groupement Europe′en des Milieux Innovateurs) group of regional economists (Aydalot & Keeble, 1988; Camagni, 1995). Clustering enables firms to benefit from a ‘collective learning process’, operating “through skilled labor mobility within the local labor market, customer–supplier technical and organizational interchange, imitation processes … and informal ‘cafeteria’ effects” (Camagni, 1991, p. 130). This process
draws upon “an intricate network of mainly informal contacts among local actors … made up of personal face-to-face encounters, casual information flows, customer–supplier cooperation and the like” (Camagni, 1991, p. 131).
However, there is a certain ambiguity as to what precisely milieux are. By some readings, a milieu is a set of institutions, practices and rules which provide a framework for development which guides and coordinates the activities of innovators. By other readings, a milieu is a network, of firms, research institutes and policy-makers, which provides the necessary coordination for successful innovation.
These different interpretations, together with the very intangibility of milieux, are the sources of major intellectual problems. Thus, the GREMI group “has never been able to identify the economic logic by which a milieu fosters innovation. There is circularity: innovation occurs because of a milieu, and a milieu is what exists in regions where there is innovation … they do not specify the potential mechanisms and processes by which such milieux function” (Storper, 1995, p. 203).
2.5 Institutional and Evolutionary Economics
A further approach derives from institutional and evolutionary economics (Nelson & Winter, 1982; Amin & Thrift, 1992; Amin, 1999). Technological change is seen as path dependent since it involves sequenced, and not simultaneous, choices which are often irreversible. There is a spatial dimension to such choices with interdependencies between organizations being both traded and untraded. The latter include rules and conventions which shape the development and communication of knowledge between local actors. Given that there are strong irreversibilities, observed clusters are to some extent accidents of history, reflecting the impact of past choices, although their development is also influenced by the appearance and growth of reinforcing institutions.
This approach is potentially very fruitful in understanding the nature of competition in contemporary capitalism (Dosi et al., 1987). Standard economic theory conceptualizes competition as the location on a production possibility frontier that maximizes a firm’s comparative advantage given an existing set of factor prices. Competition is a state, characterized by the absence or minimization of monopoly rents (Nickell, 1996). In contrast, drawing upon an Austrian perspective, institutional and evolutionary economics views competition as a process of economic change, spurred by constant technological change. Thus, if innovation is the driver of competition, a firm (or locality) may possess technologies which are superior to those of others regardless of the level of factor prices.
This distinction has come to be known as that between ‘weak’ competition and ‘strong’ or Schumpeterian competition (Hudson, 1999). Weak competition involves the search for lower cost means of producing existing goods with existing technologies. Strong competition is a strategy which involves the creation of new goods or of new technologies to produce existing goods.

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