Innovation is the main engine of competitiveness. However, in a world in which everything goes faster, the inherent nature of the innovation process has changed. This book assesses both the theoretically and empirically intertwined relationship between innovation, clusters and multinational enterprises in today's economy.

Mountains cover a quarter of the Earth’s land surface and a quarter of the global population lives in or adjacent to these areas. The global importance of mountains is recognized particularly because they provide critical resources, such as water, food and wood; contain high levels of biological and cultural diversity; and are often places for tourism and recreation and/or of sacred significance. This major revision of Larry Price’s book Mountains and Man (1981) is both timely and highly appropriate. The past three decades have been a period of remarkable progress in our understanding of mountains from an academic point of view. Of even greater importance is that society at large now realizes that mountains and the people who reside in them are not isolated from the mainstream of world affairs, but are vital if we are to achieve an environmentally sustainable future. Mountain Geography is a comprehensive resource that gives readers an in-depth understanding of the geographical processes occurring in the world’s mountains and the overall impact of these regions on culture and society as a whole. The volume begins with an introduction to how mountains are defined, followed by a comprehensive treatment of their physical geography: origins, climatology, snow and ice, landforms and geomorphic processes, soils, vegetation, and wildlife. The concluding chapters provide an introduction to the human geography of mountains: attitudes toward mountains, people living in mountain regions and their livelihoods and interactions within dynamic environments, the diverse types of mountain agriculture, and the challenges of sustainable mountain development.

Where exactly is innovation taking place? Relying on millions of patent and scientific publication records, the World Intellectual Property Report 2019 documents how the geography of innovation has evolved over the past few decades.

This handbook is a comprehensive and up to date work of reference that offers a survey of the state of financial geography. With Brexit, a global recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as new financial technology threatening and promising to revolutionize finance, the map of the financial world is in a state of transformation, with major implications for development. With these developments in the background, this handbook builds on this unprecedented momentum and responds to these epochal challenges, offering a comprehensive guide to financial geography. Financial geography is concerned with the study of money and finance in space and time, and their impacts on economy, society and nature. The book consists of 29 chapters organized in six sections: theoretical perspectives on financial geography, financial assets and markets, investors, intermediation, regulation and governance, and finance, development and the environment. Each chapter provides a balanced overview of current knowledge, identifying issues and discussing relevant debates. Written in an analytical and engaging style by authors based on six continents from a wide range of disciplines, the work also offers reflections on where the research agenda is likely to advance in the future. The book’s key audience will primarily be students and researchers in geography, urban studies, global studies and planning, more or less familiar with financial geography, who seek access to a state-of-the art survey of this area. It will also be useful for students and researchers in other disciplines, such as finance and economics, history, sociology, anthropology, politics, business studies, environmental studies and other social sciences, who seek convenient access to financial geography as a new and relatively unfamiliar area. Finally, it will be a valuable resource for practitioners in the public and private sector, including business consultants and policy-makers, who look for alternative approaches to understanding money and finance.

The central theme of this book is the changing spatial pattern of human activities during the last 2,500 years of Europe's history. Professor Pounds argues that three factors have determined the locations of human activities: the environment, the attitudes and forms of social organization of the many different peoples of Europe and lastly, the levels of technology. Within the broad framework of the interrelationships of environment, society and technology, several important themes pursued from the fifth century BC to the early twentieth century: settlement and agriculture, the growth of cities, the development of manufacturing and the role of trade. Underlying each of these themes are the discussions of political organization and population. Although the book is based in part of Professor Pound's magisterial three volumes An Historical Geography of Europe (1977, 1980, 1985), it was written especially for students and readers interested in a general survey of the subject.

This volume uniquely presents case studies on health geography in Africa, and analyzes health practices in different African regions to illustrate a unified perspective to the geographies of health. The book describes various contemporary and traditional themes that have characterized the discipline of health geography, and uses its 13 case studies across 14 chapters to challenge the perceived dichotomy between health geography and medical geography among health researchers and practitioners. In 3 sections, the book provides readers with a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to understanding health geography in Africa. The first chapter introduces the major theories and perspectives in health geography, and how these characteristics apply to health geography practices in Africa. Section 1 discusses the different uses of space-based analyses in health geography, including geo-data infrastructures, geographies of disease burden, spatial epidemiology, spatially precise public health, and spatial access to health. Section 2 discusses the different uses of place-based analyses in health geography, including health representation, healthcare access, food allergies, and health determinants. Section 3 addresses how geography is incorporated into decision processes in Africa, and how policy planning shapes health-related interventions at the population and individual level. The case studies here discuss geo-enabling health records, health policy, public health planning, and mobile health geographies.

The rapidly changing nature of animal production systems, especially increasing intensification and globalization, is playing out in complex ways around the world. Over the last century, livestock keeping evolved from a means of harnessing marginal resources to produce items for local consumption to a key component of global food chains. Livestock in a Changing Landscape offers a comprehensive examination of these important and far-reaching trends. The books are an outgrowth of a collaborative effort involving international nongovernmental organizations including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Swiss College of Agriculture (SHL), the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), and the Scientific Committee for Problems of the Environment (SCOPE). Volume 1 examines the forces shaping change in livestock production and management; the resulting impacts on landscapes, land use, and social systems; and potential policy and management responses. Volume 2 explores needs and draws experience from region-specific contexts and detailed case studies. The case studies describe how drivers and consequences of change play out in specific geographical areas, and how public and private responses are shaped and implemented. Together, the volumes present new, sustainable approaches to the challenges created by fundamental shifts in livestock management and production, and represent an essential resource for policy makers, industry managers, and academics involved with this issue.

The Laboratory of Progress: Switzerland in the 19th Century tells the improbable story of how a small, backward, mountainous agricultural country with almost no raw materials became an industrial powerhouse, a hub of innovation, a touristic mecca and a pioneer in transportation – all in the course of a single century. That a tiny landlocked country should become a dominant steamship builder for the rest of the world; that a country that had never seen a cotton plant should become the world’s second-largest textile producer; that a country with hardly any level terrain should come to boast the world’s most highly developed railway network; and that a country whose main export was impoverished emigrants should be transformed into one of the world’s major financial centres – these astonishing developments, among many others, are explored and explained, both through the specific stories of individual innovators and through a prescient analysis of the political, economic, societal and cultural structures that formed the context in which Switzerland’s astonishing transformation took place. The book is a compelling read both for professional historians and for general readers with an interest in Switzerland; it highlights the roles of transport networks and individual pioneers in industrial and political development.

Geographic information science (GIScience) is an emerging field that combines aspects of many different disciplines. Spatial literacy is rapidly becoming recognized as a new, essential pier of basic education, alongside grammatical, logical and mathematical literacy. By incorporating location as an essential but often overlooked characteristic of what we seek to understand in the natural and built environment, geographic information science (GIScience) and systems (GISystems) provide the conceptual foundation and tools to explore this new frontier. The Encyclopedia of Geographic Information Science covers the essence of this exciting, new, and expanding field in an easily understood but richly detailed style. In addition to contributions from some of the best recognized scholars in GIScience, this volume contains contributions from experts in GIS' supporting disciplines who explore how their disciplinary perspectives are expanded within the context of GIScienceâ€"what changes when consideration of location is added, what complexities in analytical procedures are added when we consider objects in 2, 3 or even 4 dimensions, what can we gain by visualizing our analytical results on a map or 3D display? Key Features Brings together GIScience literature that is spread widely across the academic spectrum Offers details about the key foundations of GIScience, no matter what their disciplinary origins Elucidates vocabulary that is an amalgam of all of these fields Key Themes Conceptual Foundations Cartography and Visualization Design Aspects Data Manipulation Data Modeling Geocomputation Geospatial Data Societal Issues Spatial Analysis Organizational and Institutional Aspects The Encyclopedia of Geographic Information Science is an important resource for academic and corporate libraries.