Semantic networks: A new methodology to retrace regional path development

Recent economic geography research has proven that evolutionary thinking provides potent explanations for regional industrial development. Recently, however, the originally rather narrow focus of the approach on preexisting related stocks of knowledge has been criticized for not accounting for emergent properties, developmental dynamics, and the strategic shaping of pathways by actors. On an epistemological level, this conceptual enlargement is confronted with a formidable challenge of bridging quantitative variance explanations with qualitative process explanations. In the present chapter, I will draw on developments in the rapidly expanding field of semantic network analysis to present a methodological approach for identifying structural and agency-related explanatory factors that shape industrial pathways. We will illustrate this approach by retracing recent path dynamics in the globally leading German automobile manufacturing region of Baden-Württemberg and conclude that this approach provides a promising inroad to a developmental evolutionary perspective.