Heike Mayer
University of Bern
Heike Mayer is professor of economic geography at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Her research is in local and regional economic development with a focus on dynamics of innovation and entrepreneurship, place making and sustainability. Heike started her academic career in the United States, where she completed a Ph.D. in Urban Studies (Portland State University) and held a tenured professorship at Virginia Tech University. She is author of the book Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Second Tier Regions (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham), co-author of Small Town Sustainability (Birkhäuser Press, Basel), and co-author of The Political Economy of Capital Cities (Routledge, London).
PLACES: Session 2
Slow innovation in Europe’s peripheral regions
Innovation processes are often conceptualized with an urban bias and are therefore theorized solely considering the perspective of the urban environment (e.g. close face-to-face contacts, dense urban milieus, fast interactions between a multitude and diverse actors, etc.). As a result, innovation theories do not sufficiently consider the context of the periphery and how this context […]