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The Dynamics of Innovative Regions: The GREMI Approach
REMIGIO RATTI, ALBERTO BRAMANTI and RICHARD
GORDON (Eds), 1997
Aldershot: Ashgate
391 pp., L45.00 hardback
ISBN 1 84014 326 6
This book originates from the fourth cycle of empirical inquiries which GREMI (Groupe de Recherche Europeen sur les Milieux Innovateur) has been developing since the mid 1980s. The GREMI group was founded in 1984 by the French professor Philipe Aydalot. Some two dozen teams from North America and Europe focused their research on technological innovations and the development of the productive system. The central hypothesis in this research holds that the firm is born out of its environment or milieu. Elements of this territory, like its past, its organisation and collective behaviour are the main components of innovations (Aydalot, 1986). Hence the term milieu innovateur came into being. In the first cycle of the research group, the impact of regional structures and policies on firms was studied. In the second phase, the attention shifted to the firm and how its innovation activities act upon spatial organisation. The third period tried to verbalise the milieu network. In the present fourth programme, the keywords are territorial trajectories and laws of motion. The programme is trying to formulate pathways along which successful innovative regions have moved or will move. Achieving this goal is certainly important for a better understanding of the regional innovation process and the necessary conditions for it to be successful.
As the editors claim in the preface, the volume has the specific objective of provoking a dialogue and discussion with the scientific `non-GREMIist' public. This book will certainly do this, if only...