Finance, Innovation and Geography: Harnessing Knowledge Dynamics in German Biotechnology

The overarching aim of Finance, Innovation and Geography: Harnessing Knowledge Dynamics in German Biotechnology is to explore linkages between geographies of finance and relational geographies of innovation. This is achieved by questioning how investment activities affect the unfolding of innovations and in turn are affected by it.

This book focuses on biotechnology innovation processes from the perspective of relational economic geography. It reconstructs the unfolding in time and space of eight innovations in German biotechnology. Each one is represented in a qualitative case study. The analysis focuses on the relational work of building, transforming, ending and replacing of collaborative relationships and organizational arrangements surrounding emergent innovations including investment relations and relational work by investors. In this way, the contribution of investors to unfolding innovations is studied with sensitivity to context and situated interactions. The geography of these dynamics is conceptualized by drawing on the recent literature on relational proximity and distance as well as ideas of materiality and space.

This book provides a unique perspective, and shows that innovation paths are strongly interwoven with local and temporary opportunities as well as crises, and that investment is embedded in these dynamics. This is essential reading for students and academics of both economics and innovation.