Since the Industrial Revolution the cyclical processes of rise and fall of regional economies have been accelerating. Many of the specific problems of the falling part of clustering, that is old industrial areas, are related to path dependency and lock-ins. Particularly political lock-ins hinder...

So far, relatively little research has been done on sectoral differences of innovation processes. In order to learn more about these differences, we apply the <italic>knowledge base</italic> concept which helps us to characterize the nature of critical knowledge that is indispensable for innovation activities....

Wind energy-related employment has been surging recently in Germany: it rose from 9200 in 1997 to 90,000 in 2007 and is estimated to be 112,000 in 2020. The industry particularly emerged in coastal, Northern Germany. Recently, big hopes have been particularly set on the offshore wind energy...

Since the beginning of the 1990s, one can observe a clear shift in the aims of regional policy in industrialized countries from reducing regional inequalities to developing endogenous small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and innovation in regions through regional innovation support systems....