ABSTRACT
Over the last 30 years knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) have been amongst the fastest growing sectors of the economy in industrialised economies. This fast growth is attributable to a variety of factors. Knowledge exchange with clients can take place in different contexts: formally, across a conference table, semi-formally in another work-place environment, or informally over drinks or on the squash-court. Establishments in any territory are linked into relationships that are essentially a-spatial, turned to actors outside the region, which for any particular establishment are also part of the innovation system within which it gravitates. Although geography may be a useful shorthand for summarising the context within which establishments function, there is no such thing as a geographically bounded innovation system. Furthermore, in a given territory each establishment will tend to constitute its own system that will be a combination of local resources and of wider, a-spatial, social and business contacts.
