• The fourth investigates regional development and management control issues
arising from clustering of advanced bioscientific knowledge exploration and
exploitation in a few globally significant ‘megacentres’.
Reference will also be made to a previous paper’s findings that the ‘bioscience
megacentre’ process is leading to the emergence of a new type of regional policy
called regional science policy that seeks to overcome the traditional centralising
features of nationally formulated science policies (and in the EU, supranational RTD
or research and technology policy).
2. Theoretical Approach
In the broadest terms, the theoretical approach informing the proposed paper dates at
least from Marshall (1918) and more recent transaction costs theory (Coase, 1937) as
developed by Penrose (1959) and Richardson (1972) with their ‘resource’ and
‘capabilities’ perspective on the firm, rather than the more orthodox neoclassical
theorems of Williamson (1985). This chimes also with Piore & Sabel’s (1984)
‘flexible specialisation’ conception of the advantages of small firm networks in
successfully attacking global markets. More recently authors such as Teece & Pisano
(1998) and Best (2001) have explored the ‘capabilities’ perspective in theoretical and
empirical depth.
Marshall’s initial statement was that small firms gained dynamic externalities
(nowadays more commonly referred to as ‘spillovers’, including ‘knowledge
spillovers’, see Audretsch, & Feldman, 1996; Feldman & Audretsch, 1999) from co-
location. These gave advantage in terms of specialised skills pools, opportunities for
production specialisation and technical or managerial knowledge transfer. These
circulated rapidly due to socio-cultural factors like trust, customs, social ties and other
institutional characteristics of ‘industrial districts’. Porter’s (1990; 1998) notion of
‘clusters’ owes much to these insights, as he readily admits.
However, through the twentieth century, such thinking became heterodox and other
aspects of Marshall’s contribution to economic theory, notably marginalism and
equilibrium theory, resonated better with the rise to power of the large corporation
and, within economics, theories explaining the superiority of economies of scale over