Sara Johansson

The influence of knowledge on firms’ export decisions

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.This paper provides an overview of relevant topics in contemporary research concerned with global, national, regional and local knowledge and innovation dynamics. In particular, we highlight how the global scene is changing in the contemporary world economy that we char-acterize as a knowledge economy. We show how knowledge and knowledge dynamics is driving innovation in the large urban agglomerations in the old and in new industrialized countries with their concentrations of abilities and resources and their superior intra-regional and international geographical proximities. In relation to the large urban agglomerations we stress the role of (i) density and proximity externalities, (ii) the physical and cultural resource base of large cities, and (iii) the interactive dynamics related to learning and creativity.