In recent years, policy makers have given much credence to the role of entrepreneurship in the transformation of regions. As a result, a new set of policy responses have emerged that focus on the support of new venture creation, small business growth and idea generation and commercialization. While there is a wealth of research about entrepreneurship in general, less attention has been given to the development of new tools and programs in support of entrepreneurial activities, and to the ways in which the emergence, the character and the types of entrepreneurship policies might differ between countries. In particular, the transatlantic perspective is of special interest because of the pioneering role of the United States in this area, and also due to the European Union's focus on economic competitiveness. The contributions included in this book explore the emergence of entrepreneurship policies from a transatlantic comparative perspective and address different aspects of entrepreneurship policies including local entrepreneurship policies and the relationship between knowledge-based industries and entrepreneurship policies.

The economic crisis has had severe and negative impacts on the EU over the last decade. This book focuses on a neglected dimension by examining European political entrepreneurship in times of economic crisis with particular emphasis on EU member-states, institutions and policies. The main focus is on the role that the political entrepreneur can play in promoting entrepreneurship and growth. It is argued that the political entrepreneur and political entrepreneurship can positively influence the conditions for entrepreneurial activity and business.

Today we can observe an increasing spatial divide as some large urban regions and many more medium-sized and small regions face growing problems such as decreasing labour demand, increasing unemployment and an ageing population. In view of these trends, this book offers a better understanding of the general characteristics and specific drivers of the geographies of growth. It shows how these may vary in different spatial contexts, how hurdles and barriers to growth in different types of regions can be dealt with, how and to what extent resources in different areas can develop, and how the potential of these resources to stimulate growth can be realized.

Illuminating and timely, this book explores several theoretical and empirical issues related to the potential for increasing capacities for innovation, knowledge and entrepreneurship. It highlights the current academic and political consensus that calls for policy interventions targeted towards more balanced, inclusive and regionally cohesive growth.

Enterprise and entrepreneurship is of strong interest to policy-makers because new and small firms can be a key contributor to job and wealth creation. However this contribution varies spatially, with some areas in a country having new firm formation rates that are up to three or four times higher than others. The vast majority of these new firms begin in the geographical area in which the founder lives, works or was born emphasising that entrepreneurship is a local event. The book documents a diversity of research approaches to examining the regional determinants of entrepreneurship in countries as contrasting as India and Sweden. The Editors call is for scholars to better understand the long run factors that influence enterprise at the local and regional level. For policy makers the Editors challenge is for them to be much clearer about the targets for their policies. Is it new firms, new jobs, productivity and does it matter where these targets are delivered? This book was published as a special issue of Regional Studies.

Since the DCMS Creative Industries Mapping Document highlighted the key role played by creative activities in the UK economy and society, the creative industries agenda has expanded across Europe and internationally. They have the support of local authorities, regional development agencies, research councils, arts and cultural agencies and other sector organisations. Within this framework, higher education institutions have also engaged in the creative agenda, but have struggled to define their role in this growing sphere of activities. Higher Education and the Creative Economy critically engages with the complex interconnections between higher education, geography, cultural policy and the creative economy. This book is organised into four sections which articulate the range of dynamics that can emerge between higher education and the creative economy: partnership and collaboration across Higher Education institutions and the creative and cultural industries; the development of creative human capital; connections between arts schools and local art scenes; and links with broader policy directions and work. Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 3.0 license.

Economic restructuring and demographic change have in recent years placed much strain on urban areas with the effects falling disproportionately on neighbourhoods that were previously underpinned by industry and manufacturing. This has presented policy makers and city planners with a binary choice: to resist change and stagnate or to change and attempt to keep up with the pace of global demand. This edited book tells the story of how urban transformation impacts on people’s lives and everyday interactions – to question where and to whom benefit accrues from these changes. Urban Transformations offers insight into both risk and reward as local communities and public authorities creatively address the challenge of building vital and sustainable urban environments. The authors in this edited collection argue that understanding the specifics of community, space and place is crucial to delivering insights into how, where, when, why and for whom urban areas might successfully transform. The chapters investigate urban change using a range of approaches, and case studies from the four corners of the Earth – from the United States to Iran; from the United Kingdom to Canada. The varying scales at which governance or regeneration initiatives operate, the nature and composition of urban communities, and the local or global interests of different private sector actors all raise questions for urban policy and practice. It is important to not only consider the drivers of regeneration, but its beneficiaries need to be identified. This edited volume addresses and elaborates on critical issues facing urban transformation and renewal as a basis for future discussion on strategies for ‘successful’ urban transformation.

In recent years, policy makers have given much credence to the role of entrepreneurship in the transformation of regions. As a result, a new set of policy responses have emerged that focus on the support of new venture creation, small business growth and idea generation and commercialization. While there is a wealth of research about entrepreneurship in general, less attention has been given to the development of new tools and programs in support of entrepreneurial activities, and to the ways in which the emergence, the character and the types of entrepreneurship policies might differ between countries. In particular, the transatlantic perspective is of special interest because of the pioneering role of the United States in this area, and also due to the European Union's focus on economic competitiveness. The contributions included in this book explore the emergence of entrepreneurship policies from a transatlantic comparative perspective and address different aspects of entrepreneurship policies including local entrepreneurship policies and the relationship between knowledge-based industries and entrepreneurship policies.

Political Entrepreneurship explores the role of political entrepreneurs in regional growth and entrepreneurial diversity. The authors define a political entrepreneur as a politician, bureaucrat or officer within the publicly funded sector who encourages entrepreneurship for growth and employment using innovative approaches. This book aims to enrich the established research on entrepreneurship with in-depth knowledge of the conditions conducive for political entrepreneurship in Sweden.

Writing regions, undertaking a regional study, was once a standard form of geographic communication and critique. This was until the quantitative revolution in the middle of the previous century and more definitively the critical turn in human geography towards the end of the twentieth century. From then on writing regions as they were experienced phenomenologically, or arguing culturally, historically, and politically with regions, was deemed to be old-fashioned. Yet the region is, and always will be, a central geographical concept, and thinking about regions can tell us a lot about the history of the discipline called geography. Despite taking up an identifiable place within the geographical imagination in scholarship and beyond, region remains a relatively forgotten, under-used, and in part under-theorised term. Reanimating Regions marks the continued reinvigoration of a set of disciplinary debates surrounding regions, the regional, and regional geography. Across 18 chapters from international, interdisciplinary scholars, this book writes and performs region as a temporary permanence, something held stable, not fixed and absolute, at different points in time, for different purposes. There is, as this expansive volume outlines, no single reading of a region. Reanimating Regions collectively rebalances the region within geography and geographical thought. In renewing the geography of regions as not only a site of investigation but also as an analytical framework through which to write the world, what emerges is a powerful reworking of the geographic imagination. Read against one another, the chapters weave together timely commentaries on region and regions across the globe, with a particular emphasis upon the regional as played out in the United Kingdom, and regional worlds both within and beyond Europe, offering chapters from Africa and South America. Addressing both the political and the cultural, this volume responds to the need for a consolidated and considered reflection on region, the regional, and regional geography, speaking directly to broader intellectual concerns with performance, aesthetics, identity, mobilities, the environment, and the body.