Geographies of Knowledge Formation in Firms
Résumé
This paper focuses on the spatial dimension of learning in firms. It works with important new insights in economic geography that stress the role of spatial proximity and territorial embeddedness in the process of knowledge formation, but it also seeks to go beyond them by recognizing learning based on relations at a distance. The paper defines space as a network of both contiguous and non‐contiguous relations of varying length, shape and duration, where knowing can involve all manner of spatial mobilizations, including placements of task teams in neutral spaces, face‐to‐face encounters, global networks held together by travel and virtual communications, flows of ideas and information through the supply chain, and trans‐corporate thought experiments and symbolic rituals.
