The Geography of Intangibles

The shift towards the intangible economy is almost unanimously acknowledged as one of the most important changes that characterize the current state of the economy. This presents significant challenges for corporate managers, accountants and policy makers. One of these challenges is a reflection on the geographical distribution of economic activities. Clustering has recently became a topic of intense interest among academic scholars circles and policy makers. However clusters have been usually analyzed in traditional manufacturing industries or, in recent years, with reference to particular aspects of the intangible economy, such as in the literature on the geography of innovation or in the literature on high-technology clusters. It is still not clear what is the overall impact of the growing importance of intangible assets on the geography of economic activities. At the same time the debate on intangible assets, can be enriched by further clearness on the spatial implication of intangibles, that is a partially unexplored aspect of the topic. Considering the spatial implications of different types of intangible assets, and more interestingly, the inherent characteristics of intangibles it is possible to argue that spatial proximity still have a great importance in spite of recent claim on the 'death of distance' and the 'end of geography' consequent to the Internet revolution. However it is worth to consider also networking of relationships both internal and external to the cluster as a determinant factor for competitiveness. Moreover, theories on intangible assets rather to focus only on individual firms must take into account a higher level of analysis considering clusters as independent actors able to generate intangible assets such as trust, mutual understanding, learning, transfer of tacit knowledge, collective knowledge and innovation.