Change in regional resource repertoires

Regional resource repertoires are not static. They change, expand and contract over time. For firms, the resource- based view (Barney 1991) has a lot to say about how resources develop. Inspired by that discussion, in this chapter we investigate how regions create, use and curate their resources.

The right terminology is difficult to find here, because sometimes resources are created in a region (e.g. by a firm) and sometimes they are created by the collective effort of the region. Regions, of course, have no agency by themselves when it comes creating, using and curating resources. However, we follow the standard practice and language of economic geographers when we talk about regional resource creation, use and curation, meaning that resources are created, used and developed by actors, such as firms or public organizations, in a region.

We have already seen how deriving uses from resources requires entrepreneurs and firms to make conscious decisions to do so. The creation and curation of resources require active decisions by regional actors too. Usually, regional resources do not appear out of the blue, and keeping them up to date requires a great deal of effort. Therefore, we will devote special attention to the role that firms and the public sector have in creation and curation. This is an important issue, because previous research in evolutionary economic geography has been criticized for being imprecise when it comes to who actually promotes path- dependent change in regional economies (Hassink, Isaksen & Trippl 2019). In the following we develop one answer to that question.

Figure 6.1 gives the roadmap for the chapter. First, regional resource creation and its varieties (endogenous and imported) are considered together with the intention involved. Thereafter, we look at the consequences of the use or non- use of regional resources: resource idleness, learning- by- using and resource depletion. We end the chapter by considering resource curation: the ways in which regions have to be looked after and cared for in order to remain as attractive components in bundles that achieve regional capabilities.