ABSTRACT
The issues of the optimal location, as well as of the local, regional and national economic impact of manufacturing production, have constituted the core of neoclassical theorizing about location in Economic Geography ever since the classical contributions of Launhardt, Weber, Losch and their early successors. Accordingly, there is a dominance of physical and visible parameters in location studies. Relatively less attention has been paid to the deeper understanding of the spatial behaviour of 'invisible' components within the manufacturing sector, such as research and development (R&D), technical innovation capacity, technical cooperation synergies, and supporting management functions in general. Despite several attempts, at multilateral and national levels, to improve the general scope and quality of information on independent service production and trade, there are still many conceptual problems and shortcomings, as well as lack of a widely accepted organization for the gathering of primary data, regarding these new phenomena (Bryson and Daniels, 1998; Daniels, 2000; Harrington, 1995; Illeris, 1996).
