Creating Knowledge over Distance: The Role of Temporary Proximity

Creating Knowledge over Distance shows that economic knowledge creation fundamentally depends on, benefits from, and is structured by temporary geographical proximity - that is, by economic actors meeting in person or interacting in a co-present context to discuss business opportunities, problems and solutions are face to face.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, personal meetings often had to be reduced or were replaced by virtual meetings, leading many observers to assume a fundamental reconfiguration of economic life in the future as face-to-face interaction may be substituted by virtual interaction through the use of new information and communication technologies. While communication patterns certainly changed during this period, this book demonstrates that the face-to-face meetings the authors investigate across a sequence of 11 chapters with different knowledge-creation contexts are unlikely to be fully substituted by distant interactions - and may even become more important over time. The book develops the argument by systematically analyzing three configurations of knowledge transfers over distance: (1) international community gatherings, such as trade fairs, delegation travel, conventions and conferences, (2) mobile business practices, including intra-firm business coordination, inter-firm projects, producer-user meetings, and corporate expansions/inter-firm negotiations, as well as (3) transnational networks, related to transnational corporations and transnational migrant firms (including new transnational firms/new Argonauts and transnational family networks).

Harald Bathelt, Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto,Sebastian Henn, Professor for Economic Geography, Friedrich Schiller University

Harald Bathelt is Professor in the University of Toronto's Department of Geography & Planning and Zijiang Visiting Chair at East China Normal University in Shanghai. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of industrial clustering, knowledge generation and innovation over distance, and regional impacts of national/international investment activity. He has published many conceptual and empirical articles in leading academic journals. From 2012 to 2020, he was Editor of the Journal of Economic Geography and is current Editor of ZFW - Advances in Economic Geography.

Sebastian Henn is Professor of Economic Geography at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. His research and teaching focuses on knowledge-based regional development, peripheries and polarisation, and regional health services research. He is (co-)editor of book series at Springer and Palgrave and has edited several anthologies with renowned international publishers. He also serves as Editor of ZFW - Advances in Economic Geography.