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AbstractEntrepreneurship is often defined as merely the starting‐up of new firms. There are obvious advantages in using this simplified definition, not least regarding measurement, but with such a definition there is also a great risk in missing important aspects of entrepreneurship and how it emerges and develops. Therefore, this paper takes its starting point in a broader definition according to which entrepreneurship is a chain of activities, including discovery of opportunities, evaluation of them and gathering resources in order to exploit these opportunities. Based on this definition, this paper examines entrepreneurship in six different spheres of society: economic; social; civil; political; academic; and innovative entrepreneurship. It can be assumed that the six forms of entrepreneurship mutually have impacts on each other, but that the directions of these impacts can vary. This paper makes a first investigation of the six dimensions of entrepreneurship in Sweden and the connections between them and measures of growth at the local government level and in various spatial areas. Economic entrepreneurship, measured in the form of start‐ups, is having the strongest connections to growth of population and employment in all types of local government areas. Political entrepreneurship seems completely unimportant for growth of metropolitan and high‐growth areas, but strongly correlated to growth in rural and low and medium growth areas.Resumen. El espíritu emprendedor se define a menudo simplemente como el establecimiento de nuevas empresas. Existen ventajas obvias en el uso de esta definición simplista, en particular en la medición, pero con tal definición se corre el grave riesgo de dejar de lado aspectos importantes del espíritu emprendedor así como la manera en que aparece y se desarrolla. Por tanto, este artículo comienza con una definición más amplia bajo la cual el espíritu emprendedor es una cadena de actividades que incluye el descubrimiento de oportunidades, su evaluación y el reunir los recursos necesarios para explotar dichas oportunidades. Con base en esta definición, este artículo examina el espíritu emprendedor dentro de seis ámbitos sociales diferentes: económico, social, civil, político, académico e innovador. Se puede asumir que las seis formas de espíritu emprendedor tienen un impacto mutuo en el resto, pero que la dirección de dichos impactos puede ser diferente. Este artículo constituye la primera investigación de las seis dimensiones del espíritu emprendedor en Suecia y de las conexiones entre ellas y los índices de crecimiento a escala de gobierno local y en varias áreas espacialmente. Las conexiones más fuertes con el crecimiento de la población y el empleo en todos los tipos de áreas de gobierno local las muestra el espíritu emprendedor económico, medido en forma del establecimiento de empresas. El espíritu emprendedor político parece no importar en absoluto para el crecimiento de áreas metropolitanas y de crecimiento elevado, pero está fuertemente correlacionado con el crecimiento de áreas rurales y de crecimiento medio o bajo.

Entrepreneurship is often viewed in a simplified way and defined as the starting of new firms. There are obvious advantages in using this simplified definition, not least regarding measurement, but with such a definition there is also a great risk in missing important aspects of entrepreneurship and how it emerges and develops. This paper starts from an assumption that entrepreneurship can be divided in four different spheres and that these spheres interact and mutually affect each other. The four spheres of entrepreneurship are: - Economic entrepreneurship, which is manifesting itself in new enterprises and products, production, distribution and sales methods and organizations. - Civil entrepreneurship, in the form of new organizations and new activities in the civil society and human relations. - Political entrepreneurship, e.g. in the form of new types of policies, governance, decision-making and implementation processes. - Academic entrepreneurship, displayed in innovative research (new hypotheses, methods, applications, etc), collaboration with other actors and commercialization of results. It can be assumed that the four forms of entrepreneurship mutually are having impacts on each other, but that the directions of these impacts can vary. On the one hand it is possible that the four types of entrepreneurship show a mutually positive relationship, on the other hand it is just as possible that the different entrepreneurships might exclude each other as they compete for the engagement of a finite number of entrepreneurs in a region. This paper makes a first investigation of the four dimensions of entrepreneurship in Sweden and the connections between them and various measures of growth on municipality level.

The growing role of knowledge as the base of the economy has meant growing expectations of universities all over the world to function as engines for regional growth. The independent role of universities is slowly being replaced by governmental policies for human capital formation, knowledge dispersion, innovation systems, triple helix, etc. One example is Sweden's new University Act that added a third task to universities' two traditional tasks, education and research, viz. cooperation with surrounding society. Theoretically, this change in policy is supported the hypothesis presented by Gibbons et al (1995) of an emerging Mode 2 of knowledge production. Based on Swedish, Scandinavian and international experience, this paper summarizes knowledge of regional effects of universities and higher education. One conclusion is that the "regiment effect" (Florax 1992) seems to be the most obvious regional effect of universities and that hopes for university-led innovative regional development have hitherto seldom been fulfilled. The paper also analyses the obstacles to more intimate cooperation between universities and surrounding society and knowledge production a la Mode 2. This analysis is performed by applying the concept of social capital. Two of the conclusions are that most regions do not have the capacity to absorb the output of the universities (Florida & Cohen 1999), and that the internal social capital of universities is not adapted to governments' demands, nor are the relations between universities and other stakeholders in regions. Keywords: University policy, Regional effects, Mode 2, Social capital

Innovation - the process of obtaining, understanding, applying, transforming, managing and transferring knowledge - is a result of human collaboration, but it has become an increasingly complex process, with a growing number of interacting parties involved. Lack of innovation is not necessarily caused by lack of technology or lack of will to innovate, but often by social and cultural forces that jeopardize the cognitive processes and prevent potential innovation. This book focuses on the rule of social capital in the process of innovation: the social networks and the norms; values and attitude

Social capital is often considered a key factor for local development. This book analyzes the role of social capital for rural areas' survival and development in the current age of metropolitan growth - an era in which urban is the norm and where rural areas must adapt to this new situation and build innovative urban-rural relations. The traditional division between 'rural' and 'urban' is no longer valid in the knowledge society. Instead of being a homogeneous unit based on primary sector production, the countryside in the developed world increasingly consists of areas with very different deve

Innovation - the process of obtaining, understanding, applying, transforming, managing and transferring knowledge - is a result of human collaboration, but it has become an increasingly complex process, with a growing number of interacting parties involved. Lack of innovation is not necessarily caused by lack of technology or lack of will to innovate, but often by social and cultural forces that jeopardize the cognitive processes and prevent potential innovation. This book focuses on the rule of social capital in the process of innovation: the social networks and the norms; values and attit.

AbstractBased on a historical overview of spatial networks and mobility, and the development of spatial theory, this review discusses current rural problems in Europe and the need for a new rural policy. The development toward a post‐urban world, that is, a world where the traditional urban–rural dichotomy is dissolving and is replaced by city‐regions and vast, declining peripheries, means a division of rural areas into two types: those becoming integrated into the growing city‐regions and the peripheries, where exploitation of natural resources is a main activity. We claim that a policy that only focuses on rural areas would fail. The reason is that endogenous rural development is simply not possible in current Europe. What is required is better urban–rural development policies oriented towards maximizing the development potential of each region, combining people‐based with place‐based approaches, and empowering local stakeholders to take greater control of their future. Regional science has an important role to play in providing decision‐makers with evidence‐based research that meets the challenges of the post‐urban world.

In the networked information and knowledge-based economy and society, the notions of 'open' and 'openness' are used in a variety of contexts; open source, open access, open economy, open government, open innovation – just to name a few. This paper aims at discussing openness and developing a taxonomy that may be used to analyse the concept of openness. Are there different qualities of openness? How are these qualities interrelated? What analytical tools may be used to understand openness? In this paper four qualities of openness recurrent in literature and debate are explored: accessibility, transparency, participation and sharing. To further analyse openness new institutional theory as interpreted by Williamson (2000) is used, encompassing four different institutional levels; cultural embeddedness, institutional environment, governance structure and resource allocations. At what institutional levels is openness supported and/or constrained?Accessibility as a quality of openness seems to have a particularly strong relation to the other qualities of openness, whereas the notions of sharing and collaborative economics seem to be the most complex and contested quality of openness in the knowledge-based economy. This research contributes to academia, policy and governance, as handling of challenges with regard to openness vs. closure in different contexts, territorial, institutional and/or organizational, demand not only a better understanding of the concept, but also tools for analysis. ; QC 20170914

In the networked information and knowledge-based economy and society, the notions of 'open' and 'openness' are used in a variety of contexts; open source, open access, open economy, open government, open innovation – just to name a few. This paper aims at discussing openness and developing a taxonomy that may be used to analyse the concept of openness. Are there different qualities of openness? How are these qualities interrelated? What analytical tools may be used to understand openness? In this paper four qualities of openness recurrent in literature and debate are explored: accessibility, transparency, participation and sharing. To further analyse openness new institutional theory as interpreted by Williamson (2000) is used, encompassing four different institutional levels; cultural embeddedness, institutional environment, governance structure and resource allocations. At what institutional levels is openness supported and/or constrained? Accessibility as a quality of openness seems to have a particularly strong relation to the other qualities of openness, whereas the notions of sharing and collaborative economics seem to be the most complex and contested quality of openness in the knowledge-based economy. This research contributes to academia, policy and governance, as handling of challenges with regard to openness vs. closure in different contexts, territorial, institutional and/or organizational, demand not only a better understanding of the concept, but also tools for analysis.

AbstractAs in other countries, urbanization and industrialization in Sweden was two sides of the same coin. To a large extent, the Swedish urbanization took place at a low level with the emergence of many small towns. In the last decades, a redistribution of the urban population to bigger cities has happened. This neo‐urbanization is interpreted as a consequence of the breakthrough of the knowledge economy. This paper focuses on the 'backside of the coin' of this neo‐urbanization, namely, how the rural areas have been affected. Westlund found that the countryside's population growth 1990–1997 primarily could be explained by income and the size of the local labour market. In this paper, we examine the current trends of population development in different age groups and extend the possible explanatory variables to among others, some variables measuring local social capital. Our main result is that it does not seem to be rural amenities per se that explain rural population growth in certain areas, but the rural areas' relative accessibility to urban amenities. This rural dependency on urban services and goods is a major challenge for rural policy in the neo‐urban knowledge economy.

ABSTRACT: By entrepreneurial combinations of voluntary resources, project means from public and private sources, commissions on contracts and other ways of financing, the youth house Fryshuset, with a great number of social activities for primarily young people in Stockholm, Sweden, has been able to allocate resources for establishing and expanding its activities. This development would not have been possible without struggle against established norms, values, traditions and institutions, not least the 'close to monopoly' that the public sector in practice was having on the fields in which Fryshuset emerged. Step by step, Fryshuset has built partnerships and alliances with public, private as well as civil actors. Expressed in a general way, Fryshuset has built a new social capital and created new norms and values.The aim of the paper is to investigate how Fryshuset has managed to build social capital through, and for entrepreneurial efforts aiming to facilitate young peoples' development.