ABSTRACT
Interest in 'what firms do, where they do it, why they do it, why they are allowed to do it, and how they organize the doing of it across different geographic scales' (Henderson, et al., 2002, p.5) forms a research focus that is cross-disciplinary within academia and is shared with the business community most directly involved. Geographers focus particularly on multi-scalar components of the territoriality of production, examining elements of the process that are rooted in the context of a particular place (micro-scale firm level) as well as meso-level metropolitan, regional, nation-state, and transnational operational factors. What Castells (1996) proposed as a new 'space of flows' in contrast to its preceding 'space of place' is reconceptualized in this study, based on detailed empirical observations, as 'flows through place', where exchanges (information, networks) occur that are constricted or accelerated by place-based contingencies. The selection of industrial parks as the space for examination of economic activity reflects the interest in comparing operations of flows across different scales of interactions, in places that vary geographically. They do, however, share the common intent to maximize flows (the key competitive ingredient for an innovation promoting milieu) - whether of information, labor, materials, and/or financial capital. The actual type of companies and processes involved in this milieu can vary widely, but the outcome is produced by new innovative behaviors (Hall, 1990).
