ABSTRACT
Recently, with the “evolutionary turn” in economic geography (Boschma & Frenken,
2006; Boschma & Martin, 2007, 2010; Menzel & Fornahl, 2010; Martin & Sunley,
2011) there has been an increasing interest in the spatial emergence of economic phenom-
ena, such as the origin of new industries. Having its roots in evolutionary economics, evol-
utionary economic geography (EEG) explains the uneven spatial distribution of economic
activities and industrial structures based on the micro-level search and selection behaviour
of firms understood as organizational routines. Emanating concepts such as related variety
and regional branching have added considerably to the economic geography literature as
they supplement the weakness of established systemic approaches to innovation by
emphasizing the influence of historical preconditions and path-dependencies in regional
economic development (Boschma & Frenken, 2006; Uyarra, 2010).
