abstract

Popular theories claim that innovation activities should be located in large cities because of more favorable environmental conditions that are absent in smaller cities or peripheral areas. Germany provides a counterexample to such theories. We argue that a major reason behind the geography of innovation in Germany is the country’s pronounced legacy of political fragmentation that created a decentralized settlement structure, shaped the geographic distribution of universities and public research institutions, and brought about a rather uniform and local access to finance. We show how political fragmentation influenced the emergence of historic centers of knowledge production and impacts the positioning of innovation activities today. We conclude that institutional factors should play a more prominent role in theories that aim at explaining the spatial distribution of innovation activities.

摘要

流行理论认为，创新活动应该设在大城市，因为小城市或周边地区缺乏更有利的环境条件。德国为这些理论提供了一个反例。我们认为，德国创新地理背后的一个主要原因是该国政治分裂的明显遗产，它创造了分散的定居结构，塑造了大学和公共研究机构的地理分布，并带来了相当统一的地方融资渠道。 . 我们展示了政治分裂如何影响历史知识生产中心的出现并影响当今创新活动的定位。