Creating Knowledge over Distance : The Role of Temporary Proximity

Creating Knowledge over Distance shows that economic knowledge creation fundamentally depends on, benefits from, and is structured by temporary geographical proximity - that is, by economic actors meeting in person or interacting in a co-present context to discuss business opportunities, problems and solutions are face to face.During the Covid-19 pandemic, personal meetings often had to be reduced or were replaced by virtual meetings, leading many observers to assume a fundamental reconfiguration of economic life in the future as face-to-face interaction may be substituted by virtual interaction through the use of new information and communication technologies.While communication patterns certainly changed during this period, this book demonstrates that the face-to-face meetings the authors investigate across a sequence of 11 chapters with different knowledge-creation contexts are unlikely to be fully substituted by distant interactions - and may even become more important over time.The book develops the argument by systematically analyzing three configurations of knowledge transfers over distance: (1) international community gatherings, such as trade fairs, delegation travel, conventions and conferences, (2) mobile business practices, including intra-firm business coordination, inter-firm projects, producer-user meetings, and corporate expansions/inter-firm negotiations, as well as (3) transnational networks, related to transnational corporations and transnational migrant firms (including new transnational firms/new Argonauts and transnational family networks).