Entrepreneurial Geographies: Support Networks in Three High-Technology Industries
基于美国IPO招股书数据，研究了半导体、电信设备和生物技术三个高科技产业中创业支持网络（律师、风投、董事、投行）的地理分布，发现生物技术网络比电子相关产业更分散，挑战了产业集群的路径依赖观点。
Abstract: Using a unique database derived from prospectuses for U.S. initial public stock offerings, we examine the location of four actors (the firm's lawyers, the venture capitalists on the board of directors, the other members of the board of directors, and the lead investment banker) of the entrepreneurial support network for startup firms in three high-technology industries: semiconductors, telecommunications equipment, and biotechnology. We demonstrate that the economic geography of the biotechnology support network differs significantly from the networks in semiconductors and telecommunications equipment. Biotechnology has a far-more-dispersed entrepreneurial support network structure than do the two electronics-related industries. The case of biotechnology indicates that if the source of seeds for new firms is highly dispersed, then an industry may not experience the path-dependent clustering suggested by geographers. We argue that contrary to common belief, biotechnology and its support network do not exhibit as great a clustering as do semiconductors and telecommunications equipment and their support networks. This argument leads to an epistemological issue, namely, the lack of interindustry comparative work. This is an odd omission, since nearly all authors agree that industries are based on particular knowledge bases, yet few consider that the knowledge and the sources of it may have an impact on spatial distributions.