Growth Cultures

This groundbreaking book is the first comparative analysis of the relative strengths of global bioregions. Growth Cultures investigates the rapidly growing phenomena of biotechnology and sets this study within a knowledge economy context. Philip Cooke proposes a new knowledge-focused theoretical framework, ‘the New Global Bioeconomy’, against which to test empirical characteristics of biotechnology.

In this timely volume, Cooke unifies concepts from the sociology of science, economic sociology and evolutionary economic geography to focus on the problems and prospects for policy agencies worldwide trying to build ‘biotechnology clusters’. He develops a superior policy approach of thinking in terms of platforms that integrate proximities and pipelines, which will be of significant interest for the scientific and technological communities as well as economic development policy communities.

Growth Cultures will make fascinating reading for students, policy makers and researchers across management and business studies, innovation and knowledge studies, sociology, science and technology policy, applied economics, development studies and regional science.

Philip Cooke is University Research Professor in Regional Development and founding Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Wales, Cardiff. He is Adjunct Professor in Spatial Planning at the University of Aalborg, Denmark. His research interests lie in studies of Economics of Biotechnology, Regional Innovation Systems, Knowledge Economies, and Policy Actions for Business Clusters and Networks. He is author of Knowledge Economies: Clusters, Learning and Cooperative Advantage (Routledge, 2002).