Social Geography Discussions www.soc-geogr-discuss.net 1816-1499 1816-1502 3 1 2007 10.5194/sgd-3-1-2007 http://www.soc-geogr-discuss.net/3/1/2007/ http://www.soc-geogr-discuss.net/3/1/2007/sgd-3-1-2007.html http://www.soc-geogr-discuss.net/3/1/2007/sgd-3-1-2007.pdf 1 29 2007-01-16 Mobile talent or privileged sites? Making sense of biotech knowledge worker mobility and performance in Sweden H. Mattsson henrik.mattsson@kultgeog.uu.se Department of Social and Economic Geography & CIND, Uppsala University, P.O. Box 513, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden Great hope is currently put in biotechnological innovation to create economic growth and ensure future competitiveness or firms, regions and nations. For some years, economic geography and economics have been focusing on privileged sites when explaining geographical variances in actors' ability to innovate: e.g. regional innovation systems, clusters, industrial districts, creative milieus, etc. In such explanations, the basic notion is that certain sites, as a result of their privileged configuration, relative position and history, tend to support innovation to a higher degree than other milieus. Lately, however, there has been a shift in focus within some research communities towards what could be called a "talented people" explanation. The problem for those interested in biotech innovation policy and in the larger question about exactly how biotechnological knowledge production takes place, is that this debate offers two diametrically different understandings of (i) the geography of innovation and, in turn, (ii) how to actually design innovative spaces or increase rates of innovation. 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