The emergence of new industries at the regional level: alignment of organizational and regional industrial culture

Abstract

This article provides insights into how and where new industries emerge and grow through theoretical reasoning and the advancement of relevant arguments through empirical examples from industry emergence in two Norwegian regions: the establishment of the boatbuilding and the electronics industry in Arendal; and the cancer medicine and educational technology industry in Oslo. The article focuses on culture as an important asset for new industry emergence. We argue that industry emergence is supported if organizational culture in emerging industries and existing or altered regional industrial culture become aligned. The four industry cases demonstrate how in some situations industries emerge through a branching route, for example, related spin-offs, while in other cases they emerge through a creation route based on unrelated local start-ups or importation. We argue that an alignment of organizational and regional industrial culture is more easily achieved in the branching than in the creation route.