Rupert Waters

Social Networks in High-Technology Local Economies The Cases of Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire

The clustering of innovative industry both demands and creates a highly skilled local labour market. The growth of this agglomeration of labour, it has been argued, benefits both individuals and firms by providing the opportunity for matching labour demand with labour supply,which is crucial to sustaining innovation. Additionally, mobility within the local labour market is argued to be of collective benefit as the movement of the highly skilled within the cluster is a key mechanism for technology transfer and fostering of interfirm links. Social networks (social capital) are argued in the literature to be the medium by which these activities are facilitated and the development of which is key to innovation-based local economic development. This is exemplified by SiliconValley.To examine the universality of these assumptions, this article explores the development of social networks among scientists and engineers in the high-technology local economies of Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire. Drawing on the results of a postal survey of the engineers, physicists and chemists in the local labour markets of these regions carried out between November 2000 and March 2001, the article considers the networking behaviour of the highly skilled, focusing on the composition and spatial reach of their networks. It concludes that the importance of local networks should not be overstated on the basis that there are distinct differences within two seemingly similar locations and within the professional associations.

Entrepreneurial regions: Evidence from Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire

Understanding the growth of entrepreneurial regions and the extent to which the actors in the triple helix model are dominant at particular stages in development is the theme of this article. Both Oxfordshire and the Cambridge sub-region are important high-tech economies dominated by historic universities, Oxford and Cambridge (often referred to collectively as Oxbridge), two of the world’s leading research universities. As entrepreneurial regions, however, they differ in a number of respects. In the article different dynamics leading to the inception, implementation, consolidation and renewal of regions characterized by very high levels of technology-based entrepreneurship are explored. It is argued that, although they are leading locations of multiple clusters of high-tech firms, they could have been more successful in creating more and bigger firms. It is proposed that part of the explanation lies in the relative lack of engagement of their major assets (the universities) in leading local economic development.

Universities and science and engineering labour markets in high-technology local economies: the cases of Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire

The contributions in this volume extend our understanding about the different ways distance impacts the knowledge conversion process. Knowledge itself is a raw input into the innovation process which can then transform it into an economically useful output such as prototypes, patents, licences and new companies. New knowledge is often tacit and thus tends to be highly localized, as indeed is the conversion process. Consequently, as the book demonstrates, space or distance matter significantly in the transformation of raw knowledge into beneficial knowledge.