Territorial Knowledge dynamics and anchoring milieus in Europe

This paper is an attempt to introduce a different perspective on the relationship between knowledge and territorial development. Today, knowledge can be seen as essentially mobile and regions will prosper to the extend that they can anchor it and develop it further locally. Knowledge is then expected to generate economic value. In order to understand that process of value creation, it is necessary to abandon the well known distinction between tacit knowledge, which would stick tot he local, and codified knowledge, which would be mobile. Indeed, the paper proposes another distinction. On the one hand, substantive knowledge generates value thanks to exclusivity rights for its exploitation. One the other hand, the more significant knowledge diffuses and is shared, the more economic value it generates. This distinction is then used to interpret the results of the EURODITE research project. A typology of territorial knowledge dynamics and anchoring milieus is build. A larger European knowledge system is sketched out.