Research interest in the service sector has boomed in recent years as deindustrialisation became entrenched. Instead of being regarded as merely supplementary to traditional industry and manufacturing, services have generated progressively rising levels of growth in developed economies while at the same time coming to be recognised as major drivers of innovation. Among the factors which have helped service companies notch up swifter growth rates than all other sectors are the outsourcing of such services by other sectors, including the development of information and communication technologies, and changes to the regulatory, legal and market frameworks as well as globalisation and internationalisation. The result is a cluster of highly innovative firms which can loosely be grouped under the heading of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS). Knowledge Intensive Business Services and Regional Competitiveness charts the development of these firms and explores their success through four mutually linked parts: KIBS and industrial dynamics; KIBS and their context; KIBS and their contribution to regional competitiveness and economic development; and finally, KIBS and public policy. This book is suitable for researchers and policy makers interested in the rise of these influential actors and their influence on regional competitiveness.

Most of the papers of this book were presented in the "IGU-LUCC 2003 Moscow Workshop on Global and Regional Land Use/Cover Changes" and at International Conference "Society and Environment Interaction Under Global and Regional Changes" which was held in Barnaul (Altai), Russia in summer 2003.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are providers of knowledge and competencies. HEIs are very important to the development of society and the regions they impact geographically. The current uncertainty and challenges require new ways of educating. They require the use of new pedagogical tools that prepare students to deal with real and future problems, train them to deliver solutions, help them to analyze challenges and create future scenarios, and engage them in collaborative work toward the creation of innovation. Collaborative work between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and HEIs broadens networking, stimulates research, accelerates innovation, and nurtures regional development. The Impact of HEIs on Regional Development: Facts and Practices of Collaborative Work With SMEs shares the best practices of implemented co-creation innovation processes by HEIs. It describes the pedagogical processes and tools used to respond to SME challenges. Covering topics such as innovation co-creation networks, sustainable development, and teaching entrepreneurship, this premier reference source is an excellent resource for policymakers, administrators, educators and students of higher education, practitioners, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

Nobel Laureate and the first author to win the Booker Prize twice, J.M. Coetzee is perhaps the world's leading living novelist writing in English. Including an international roster of world leading critics and novelists, and drawing on new research, this innovative book analyses the whole range of Coetzee's work, from his most recent novels through his memoirs and critical writing. It offers a range of perspectives on his relationship with the historical, political, cultural and social context of South Africa. It also contextualises Coetzee's work in relation to his literary influences, colonial and post-colonial history, the Holocaust and colonial genocides, the 'politics' and meaning of the Nobel prize in South Africa and Coetzee's very public move from South Africa to Australia. Including a major unpublished essay by leading South African novelist André Brink, this book offers the most up-to-date study of Coetzee's work currently available.

Various theories have been put forward as to why business and industry develops in clusters and despite good work being carried out on path dependence and dynamics, this is still very much an emerging topic in the social sciences. To date, no overarching theoretical framework has been developed to show how clusters evolve. Unfolding Cluster Evolution aims to address this gap by presenting theoretical and empirical research on the geography of innovation. This contributed volume seeks to shed light on the understanding of clusters and its dynamic evolution. The book provides evidence to suggest that traditional perspectives from evolutionary economic geography need to be wedded to management thinking in order to reach this point. Bringing together thinking from a range of disciplines and countries across Europe, this book explores a wide range of topics from the capability approach, to network dynamics, to multinational corporations, to firm entry and exit and social capital. This book will be of interest to policy makers and students of urban studies, economic geography, and planning and development.

The aim of this volume is to explore entrepreneurship and business from the perspective of Islamic principles, which are usually based on collaboration, teamwork, generosity and altruism. The contributions deal with the confluence of Islamic Principles with entrepreneurial and business ownership characteristics; resource use by entrepreneurs; means of entrepreneurial success, and ethics and social responsibility.

This book offers a unique analytic framework for assessing multi-level governance arrangements, which is subsequently applied to five case studies of regional development policy: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Economic and financial crises have brought the rise of unemployment, reduction of economic growth and emergence of global imbalances and tensions as countries and regions have suffered the effects of a variety of internal and external shocks. In this context of constant disruption, the scientific community has struggled to provide satisfactory answers to current economic challenges within standard frameworks. Focusing on the interconnections between innovation and resilience, this edited book contributes to a better understanding of how the crisis affects innovation and the capacity of territories to adapt and evolve. It offers both theoretical and empirical contributions that debate the notions of resilience in regional and urban contexts and serve as case studies related to innovation strategies and territorial clusters.

This book discusses the role of regional design and visioning in the formation of regional territorial governance to offer a better understanding of (1) how a recognition of spatial dynamics and the visualization of spatial futures informs, and is informed by, planning frameworks and (2) how such design processes inform co-operation and collaboration on planning in metropolitan regions. It gathers theoretical reflections on these topics, and illustrates them by means of practical experiences in several European countries. Innovatively associating ideas with knowledge, it appeals to anyone with an interest in planning experiments in a post-regulative era. It aims at an increased understanding of how practices, engaged with the imagination of possible futures, support the creation of institutional capacity for strategic spatial planning at regional scales.

This book explores the transition from the era of internationalization into the era of globalization of Japan by focusing on language and identity as its central themes. By taking an interdisciplinary approach covering education, cultural studies, linguistics and policy-making, the chapters in this book raise certain questions of what constitutes contemporary Japanese culture, Japanese identity and multilingualism and what they mean to local people, including those who do not reside in Japan but are engaged with Japan in some way within the global community. Topics include the role of technology in the spread of Japanese language and culture, hybrid language use in an urban context, the Japanese language as a lingua franca in China, and the identity construction of heritage Japanese language speakers in Australia. The authors do not limit themselves to examining only the Japanese language or the Japanese national/cultural identity, but also explore multilingual practices and multiple/fluid identities in "a transitional Japan." Overall, the book responds to the basic need for better accounts of language and identity of Japan, particularly in the context of increased migration and mobility.