ABSTRACT
Economic geographers increasingly consider the significance of history in shaping the contemporary socio-economic landscape. Inspired by evolutionary economics (Nelson and Winter, 1982), it is acknowledged that we have now arrived at a new stage in economic geography, i.e. the ‘evolutionary turn’ (Grabher, 2009). Simply put, it is believed that experiences and competencies acquired over time by individuals and entities in particular localities to a large degree determine present configurations as well as future regional trajectories. In order to trace, understand and investigate the pathways from past to present, economic geographers have sought insights from a number of closely related fields, including regional science, the geography of innovation approach (Feldman and Kogler, 2010), other disciplines such as heterodox economics, and to some extent also the natural sciences (Boschma and Martin, 2010a). The results of these efforts have given rise to a thriving and exciting sub-field within the larger discipline, entitled evolutionary economic geography (EEG).
