“Regional Resilience: Towards an Evolutionary Approach” with Ron Boschma

While the concept of regional economic resilience is gaining popularity among academics and policy makers, there is no universally accepted definition of resilience. Boschma, as one of the founding scholars of Evolutionary Economic Geography, proposes an evolutionary perspective on regional resilience. He conceptualizes resilience not just as the ability of a region to accommodate shocks, but extends it to the long-term ability of regions to develop new growth paths. Resilience is a highly path-dependent process, thus to understand how regions adapt and develop new growth paths after crises or decline, history is key. Boschma argues, that regional resilience is shaped by related and unrelated variety, knowledge networks and institutional structures.

Ron Boschma is Full Professor in Regional Economics at the Department of Economic Geography at the Faculty of Geosciences, University of Utrecht (Netherlands). He received a PhD degree in Economics at the Tinbergen Institute, Faculty of Economics and Econometrics, Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1994 and a Master Degree in Social Geography at the Faculty of Economics, University of Amsterdam, 1988. His scientific work concentrates on working out conceptually and empirically Evolutionary Economic Geography. Boschma has published in international journals on the spatial evolution of industries, the geography of innovation, proximity and innovation, the structure and evolution of spatial networks, regional diversification, and agglomeration externalities and regional growth.
Boschma is Associate Editor of Regional Studies since 2013, and a member of the Editorial Boards of Economic Geography and Review of Regional Research (Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft). He is also Editor of the working paper series Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography.