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Summary Sentence: Manufacturing by Design: The Rise of Regional Intermediaries and the Reemergence of Collective Action
Full Summary: No summary paragraph submitted.
Jennifer ClarkSpeaker:
Jennifer Clark
Title:
Manufacturing by Design: The Rise of Regional Intermediaries and the Reemergence of Collective Action
Abstract:
After decades of disinvestment, manufacturing is again at the center of the policy discourse in the US and the UK (Bryson, Clark et al. 2013). The question of how to shape regional policies to incubate, support and sustain emerging manufacturing technologies and spur job creation has become the subject of extensive debate in the wake of the global recession. This discussion involves manufacturing firms, researchers in advanced and emerging technologies, and a network of institutional and policy actors responsible for shaping regional and national economic policy. In particular, regions---both “high tech” and older industrial cities---lack the capacity to provide and sustain export-oriented employment over time without a rethinking of regional economic development policy and practice and a reorientation towards job creation.
This presentation focuses on the role of regional intermediaries in the return of manufacturing---to cities and to the center of regional policy debates. Specifically, this presentation analyzes how supply-chain intermediaries, labor market intermediaries, and innovation intermediaries maintain, embed, and expand flexibly specialized production capacity in regions and create variation across places. The typology presented in this research highlights the diversity among intermediaries and underscores how they contribute to emerging models of 21st century manufacturing.
The research also highlights how these emerging regional intermediaries support the small-scale producers and enable these firms to emerge and grow as an embedded, localized, networked group----effectively operating as a cohort not tied by sector or technology but by process---to how they produce not what they produce. These intermediaries recast manufacturing as a practice of working with others rather than working for others thus reintroducing both agency and collective action to the narrative about manufacturing. This reconfiguration of firms and work has profound implications for both local and regional economic development policy.
References:
John Bryson, Jennifer Clark, and Rachel Mulhall (2013). The competitiveness and evolving geography of British manufacturing: where is manufacturing tied locally and how might this change? Evidence Paper 3: The Future of British Manufacturing: A New Era of Opportunity and Challenge for the UK.
Foresight | United Kingdom Government Office for Science, London 2013
Clark, Jennifer (2013). Working Regions: Reconnecting Innovation and Production in the Knowledge Economy. London, Routledge.
Clark, Jennifer and Pierre Clavel (2012). "Introduction: Progressive Approaches to Manufacturing Policy." Progressive Planning 190(Winter 2012).
Doussard, M., et al. (2009). "After Deindustrialization: Uneven Growth and Economic Inequality in "Postindustrial" Chicago." Economic Geography 85(2): 183-207.
Helper, Susan (2009). The High Road for U.S. Manufacturing. Issues in Science and Technology. 25: 39.
Helper, Susan., et al. (2012). Locating American Manufacturing: Trends in the Geography of Production. Washington DC, The Brookings Institution.
Bio:
Jennifer Clark is the Director of the Center for Urban Innovation and an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Dr. Clark’s research focuses on regional economic development, manufacturing, industrial districts and innovation. Her first book, Remaking Regional Economies: Power, Labor, and Firm Strategies in the Knowledge Economy won the Best Book Award from the Regional Studies Association in 2009. She recently published Working Regions: Reconnecting Innovation and Production in the Knowledge Economy (2013). Her work focuses on policy models aimed at rebuilding the links between innovation and manufacturing in the US. She has collaborated on manufacturing and innovation policy projects with a broad range of organizations including the OECD, and the Canadian, UK, and US governments. Dr. Clark earned her Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University, a Master’s degree in Economic Development and Planning from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, and holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. At Georgia Tech, Dr. Clark teaches courses on urban and regional economic development theory, analysis, and practice as well as research design and methods. She is also a distinguished visiting fellow with the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK.
