Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography Institute News
Five presentations at the "Regions in Recovery" Global E-Festival

Five presentations at the "Regions in Recovery" Global E-Festival

© S. Losacker, 2021

In June, the Global E-Festival organized by the Regional Studies Association was held under the theme "Regions in Recovery." The E-Festival was attended by 1250 people online from 71 countries, making it one of the largest events in this scientific community. The Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography contributed five presentations.

In his presentation on the diffusion of environmental innovations in China, Sebastian Losacker showed that geographic proximity, among other (spatial) factors, plays an important role in accelerating diffusion processes.

Lars Mewes presented preliminary results of his explorative study on governmental intervention in regional structural change based on historic patent data covering 100 years in the United States.

Carsten Rietmann presented results on the embedding of hidden champions in rural regional innovation systems - in particular with regard to firm-internal and firm-external determinants.

Kerstin J. Schaefer presented findings from her project ""Give us ideas!" - Gaining innovativeness through strategic direction of intra-firm technology transfer" that is investigating the transfer of technology within latecomer companies using a mixed-methods approach of survival analysis with patent data and qualitative interviews.

In his presentation "Latecomers in International ICT Standardization", Lennart Schott outlined the initial results of a joint project with Kerstin J. Schaefer. Among other things, the study shed empirical light on how company origin and experience can influence the acceptance of technical contributions in international standard-setting and what role actors from latecomer regions play in this context.