We are now living through a period of knowledge capitalism in which, as Castells put it, 'the action of knowledge upon knowledge is the main source of productivity.' In the face of such transformation, the economic, social and institutional contours of contemporary capitalism are being reshaped. At the heart of this world are an emergent set of economies, regions, institutions and peoples central of the flows and translations of knowledge. This book provides an interdisciplinary review of the triad of knowledge, space, economy on entering the twenty-first century. Drawing on a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, the first part of the book comprises a set of statements by leading authors on the role of knowledge in capitalism. Thereafter, the remaining two parts of the book explore the landscape of knowledge capitalism through a series of analyses of knowledge in action within a range of economic, political and cultural contexts. Bringing together a set of authors from across the social sciences, this book provides both a major theoretical statement on understanding the economic world and an empirical exemplification of the power of knowledge in shaping the spaces and places of today's society.

This book explores the relationship between space and economy, the spatial expressions of the knowledge economy. The capitalist industrial economy produced its own space, which differed radically from its predecessor agrarian and mercantile economies. If a new knowledge-based economy is emerging, it is similarly expected to produce its own space to suit the new circumstances of production and consumption. If these spatial expressions do exist, even if in incomplete and partial forms, they are likely to be the model for the future of cities.

This volume deals with key issues of the space economy, defined as the full range of activities and the use of resources that create value and benefits for human beings in the course of exploring, researching, understanding, managing and utilizing space. These topics are treated from an economic perspective, with particular attention paid to the development of knowledge, as well as the set-up of technologies with high industrial impacts. The book, thus, provides a new and wider interpretation of the space economy, focusing on the (tangible) returns of the investments made in the space industry since the Space Race. It will particularly appeal to scholars, researchers and PhD students, as well as those in the space community.

The overarching research topic addressed in this book is the complex and multifaceted interaction between infrastructural accessibility/connectivity of city-regions on the one hand and knowledge generation in these city-regions on the other hand. To this end, the book brings together chapters analysing how infrastructural accessibility is related to changing patterns of business location of knowledge-intensive industries in city-regions. The chapters in this book specifically dwell on recent manifestations of and developments in the accessibility/knowledge-nexus, with a particular metageographical focus on how this materializes in major city-regions. In the different chapters, this shifting relation is broached from different perspectives (seaports, airports, brainports), at different scales (ranging from global-scale analyses to case studies), and by adopting a variety of methodologies (straddling the wide variety of methodological approaches currently adopted in human geography research). Researchers contributing to this edited volume come from different scholarly backgrounds (sociology, human geography, regional planning), which allows for a varied treatise of this research topic.

The key message of this book is that heterogeneity should be seen as an intrinsic and indispensable element of knowledge systems. The authors address the concept of heterogeneity in a multi-disciplinary fashion, including perspectives from evolutionary economics and innovation system studies, and relate this approach to existing theories in a broad range of fields. The book postulates that one approach to such a re-conceptualization is what we call the Mode 3 system consisting of Innovation Networks and Knowledge Clusters for knowledge creation, diffusion and use. This is a multi-layered, multi-modal, multi-nodal and multi-lateral system, encompassing mutually and complementary reinforcing innovation networks and knowledge clusters consisting of human and intellectual capital, shaped by social capital and underpinned by financial capital. Diversity in the Knowledge Economy and Society will appeal to academics and researchers of innovation and science, knowledge management and economics.

This book traces the theoretical explanation for clusters back to the work of classical economists and their more modern disciples, who saw economic development as a process involving serious imbalances in the exploitation of resources. Initially, natural resource endowments explained the formation of nineteenth and early twentieth-century industrial districts. Today, geographical concentrations of scientific and creative knowledge are the key resource. But these require a support system, ranging from major injections of basic research funding, to varieties of financial investment and management, tothe provision of specialist incubators, for economic value to be realised. These are also specialised forms of knowledge that contribute to a serious imbalance in the distribution of economic opportunity.

A structural overview of the new field of management geography including globalization, embeddedness of MNEs, networking, hybridization, regional economies, technology, acculturation, internationalization, IHRM and implications for management and government.