In what sense ‘regional development?’: entrepreneurship, underdevelopment and strong tradition in the periphery

Paul Benneworth

Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 2004, vol. 16, issue 6, 439-458

Abstract: This paper explores whether entrepreneurship can help less successful regions to improve their regional economic situation, without all the benefits that entrepreneurship brings when being ‘stripped out’ to more successful regions. The paper uses the idea that peripheral regions possess qualities of tradition and underdevelopment, and that these help to anchor new firms into these regions, resistant to their concentration in core regions. The paper explores whether particular entrepreneurial events can be regarded as ‘densifying’ the regional entrepreneurial environment, thereby making a positive contribution to its economic development. The paper explores the role of these negative anchors to the entrepreneurial events and the densification process by following a sequence of high-technology spin-out firms in the North East of England. Using a realist methodology attempting to interview all the firms within the sequence which could be found, the paper discovers that quite positive advantages exist within these negative qualities.The paper then considers whether these processes, such as plant closure, might drive entrepreneurship in all regions.

Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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DOI: 10.1080/0898562042000249786

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