A Cultural Political Economy of Knowledge Brands: Upgrading

‘Clusters’ and Facilitating ‘Regional Innovation System’

Ngai-Ling SumPolitics and International Relations Department &

Cultural Political Economy Research CentreLancaster University

Outline• Towards a Cultural Political Economy • Three Overlapping Stages in the

Development of Knowledge Brands• Some Current Knowledge Brands and

their Recontextualization• The Case of the Pearl River Delta:

Upgrading ‘Clusters’ and Facilitating ‘Regional Innovation System’

• Concluding Remarks

I. Towards a Cultural Political Economy (CPE)

• Taking the ‘cultural turn’ seriously in

the study of socio-economic relations

• Exploring the interface between the

discursive and extra-discursive,

including the semiotic and material

bases of power (Sum 2004, Jessop

2004, Sum and Jessop 2010)

– Some ‘semioses’ are more powerful than others

– Nodal knowledge gets sedimented as transnational knowledge brands (Sum 2004; 2009)

– Introduce the idea of knowledge brand to innovation studies

• Illustration with the Harvard-Porterian brand of ‘competitiveness/cluster’

• Three overlapping stages in the development of knowledge brand

Articulation of Major Discourses and

Practices

Major Authors/Institutions

Stage 1Theoretical paradigm

Technology, innovation & national competitiveness research monographs and papers

Schumpeter, Vernon, Freeman, Nelson, etc.

Stage 2Policy paradigm

Competitiveness policy, competitiveness commissions, white papers, and technology policy

Commission of Industrial Competitiveness, Council on Competitiveness, OECD, EU, etc.

Stage 3Management/consultancy knowledge and knowledge brand

Diamond model, clusters, cluster mapping, cluster charts, Green Book, indexes, pilot projects, workshops, and training courses

Porter, Harvard Business School, Monitor Group, World Economic Forum, UNIDO, etc.

2. Three Overlapping Stages in Development of Knowledge Brands: ‘Cultures of Competitiveness’

A knowledge brand (is a form of commodified knowledge that) operates as a resonant hegemonic meaning-making device advanced in various ways by ‘world-class’ guru-academic-consultants who claim unique knowledge of a relevant strategic or policy field and pragmatically translate this into transnational policy symbols, recipes and tool kits that address social tensions, contradictions, and dilemmas and also appeal to pride, threats, and anxieties about socio-economic restructuring and changes

• Porter’s concepts of competitiveness and clusters are simple and flexible

• These allow diverse interpretations, frequent renewal and continuous circulation in the guru-policy-consultancy-think tank circuit

• Especially in a conjuncture marked by the demand for fast policy and the fear of economic restructuring

Table 2 Institutions and Discourses Related to Competitiveness at Different Scales

Scales Examples of Institutions Involved

Examples of Competitiveness Discourses/Instruments

Global/International

World Economic ForumInstitute for Management DevelopmentThe Competitiveness InstituteUnited Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)

Global Competitiveness IndexWorld Competitiveness ScoreboardThe Cluster Initiative DatabaseThe Cluster Initiative Greenbook 2003Clusters and Networks Development Programme 2005

Regional Asian Development BankAfrican UnionInter-American Development Bank

Asian Development Outlook 2003: Competitiveness in Developing CountriesPan African Competitiveness Forum 2008Competitiveness of Small Enterprises: Cluster and Local Development 2007

National United States Agency for International Development (USAID)Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

African Global Competitiveness Initiative 2006Strategic Investment Action Plan (Competitiveness/SME) 2005

Local/City Numerous (inter-)city and metropolitan competitiveness projects and plansThink tanks, research institutes, OECD, city governments

OECD ‘s International Conference on City Competitiveness 2005Regional Powerhouse 2005The Outline of the Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River Delta 2008-2020

3. Current Knowledge Brands and their Recontextualization

• Apart from the Harvard-Porterian brand, there are other complementary and competing ‘knowledge brands’ in current policy market (e.g., national/regional innovation system, technological capabilities, etc.)

Knowledge Brands Major Promoters Major Concepts

Competitive Advantage Porter, Harvard Business School, Monitor Group, Enright, Scott and Associate

Competitiveness, cluster building, cluster mapping

Creative Class Florida and Florida, Martin Prosperity Institute

Cultural industries, creative clusters, culture as resources

Innovation System Freeman, Lundvall, Nelson and Winter, Asheim, OECD

UNIDO, ESCAP

National/Regional innovation systemScience and technologySub-national Innovation systems in emerging economies

Technological Capabilities for developing countries

Lall, Rasiah, UNCTAD

Lall, Gereffi, IDS, UNIDO, ADB, USAID

Technological, managerial and organizational skills, organizational structures and technological change

Catch-up competitiveness, clusters, supply/value chains and poverty reduction

Capabilities in human development

Sen, Nussbaum and UNESCO

Human development, gender mainstreaming

4. The Pearl River Delta Case (PRD)

• The hybridization of brands in a recent initiative proposed by Guangdong Provincial Government in China

• The Outline of the Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River Delta (2008-2020)

• Central/provincial governments, academic- consultants, policymakers, commissions selectively recontextualized and hybridized these brands in response to the crisis

The Outline of the Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River Delta

(2008-2020)

The National Development and

Reform Commission

December 2008

• The Outline recontextualizes and hybridizes various knowledge brands – A mix of Porter, Florida, Lundvall, Lall and

Sen (with energy and green twists)

• Many entry-points, focuses on the– constructing regional economic identity;

and– framing the organization of regional space

in ‘high-end competitiveness’ terms

Constructing regional identity

• Regional identity is framed in ‘leapfrogging’, ‘scientific’, ‘innovative’ and ‘creative’ terms

• ‘… translation of innovative findings, and realize leapfrogging development of industrial technologies’ (2008: 29)

• ‘ … (cultivation) of a group of innovative enterprises with strong innovating capabilities’ (2008: 32)

• ‘… transformation from “Made in Guangdong” to “Created by Guangdong” (2008: 31)

Framing the organization of regional space in ‘high-end competitiveness’ terms

• ‘The region will shape a mainstay of industry clusters dually supported by modern service industries and advanced manufacturing industries’ (2008: 15)

• ‘… an open regional innovation system in which enterprises play the leading roles, and which is guided by the market and combines industries, universities, and research academies, established the first innovation region of the country, develop into an important innovation hub and a major base for translation of research findings of Asian-Pacific region, and advance its international competitiveness in an all-round way’ (2008: 29)

• ‘…. the region will innovate its mechanisms for international and regional cooperation …. and improve its open economic system featured by domestic and overseas interaction, mutual benefits and win-win results, and safety and efficiency.’ (2008: 11)

• ‘The region will expedite the construction of the construction of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong passenger railway, start at an early date the construction of certain infrastructures, such as the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge ….’ (2008: 109)

• From a neo-Foucauldian viewpoint, this Outline can be seen as a technology of control

• It instils a structuring language that legitimizes the competitiveness-innovation integration order via two kinds of governmental power:

Technology Apparatuses Truth Effects

Technology of coherence

Economic categories of ‘clusters’ and‘regional innovation system’

The regional space is objectified and visibilized in particular ways:

Invokes essence derived from the coherent relationship between economic factors or members of the system (e.g., firms, industries, universities and research institutes)

These actors are processed together so that complementary relationships and learning activities can be established They are posited as belonging to a system that can be instrumentalized for upgrading

Techno-logy of agency

‘Win-win’ and ‘leapfrogging’ discursive tools

• Bringing forth agency to be part of this competitive-innovation-integration project

• Controlling sites for exercising agency

• Select and endorse sites (e.g., universities) for exercising institutional agency whose job is to upgrade competitiveness and enhance innovation

• Controlling types of agency ‘Win-win’ and ‘leapfrogging’ discursive tools frame ‘innovation system’ in terms of development’ and opportunity’

• ‘Opportunity’ imparts to agencies particular self-conduct

self-responsibility to upgrade self-blame for missing the opportunity self-control to comply with the imperative of development and growth self-criticism for being marginalized by not upgrading

• Apart from the Outline, making a competitiveness-innovation-integration order also involves

– Assembling implementation plans, directives, letters of

intent, coordination ministries & committees, task forces,

infrastructural projects, introduction/implementation

forums, press releases, etc.

• This articulated assemblage of discourses, technologies and practices helps to constitute and naturalize a kind of innovation governmentality

• Governing common sense via technology of coherence and agency does not mean it is not challenged and negotiated by embedded social forces across different sites and scales

• Issues include: who is being displaced and/or otherized by upgrading ‘clusters’ and facilitating ‘regional innovation system’

• Regional innovation-integration limits and struggles

• The innovation imperative demands greater regional interactions

• Top-down call for the expedition of the construction of the high-speed rail link in the PRD

• Some controversial issues– Displacing residence of a

village and community life

– The route and the choice of station affect property prices in the area – who gain and who loose?

5. Some Concluding Remarks• CPE explores interface of discursive and the extra-

discursive dimensions, hence semiotic and material bases of power

• Some semiotic forms and discourses are more powerful. I have looked at knowledge brands (and not just knowledge)

• Introduce idea of knowledge brand in innovation studies• Examine hybridization and sedimentation of these

knowledge brands in mapping spaces as innovative • Use ‘Outline’ of the PRD to examine recontextualization

and hybridization of various brands (e.g., Porter, Florida, Lundvall, OECD, etc.) as the region upgrades

• The making of this competitiveness-innovation-integration order is partly constituted through deployment of governmental power of steering and agency (in a neo-Foucauldian sense)

• This process is– discursively and structurally selective and, therefore,

far from neutral (e.g., they systematically benefit some social forces more than others)

– more than an economic one but involves a mix of micro-power of knowledge recontextualization and the macro-power of struggles, negotiation and the contestation

The End

Thank You!

Cultural Political Economy Research Centre

Lancaster University

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/cperc