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This paper deals with the evolution of the ICT cluster in southern Sweden. It forges a link between the literatures on cluster development and regional innovation systems (RISs), and explores both conceptually and empirically how cluster evolution is shaped by regional context conditions, including changes in the policy support structure and the knowledge base configuration of the RIS. We use qualitative research methods and descriptive statistics to analyse the development and transformation of the ICT cluster. Cluster emergence was enabled by strong analytical and synthetic knowledge bases in the region. The global crisis and changing geography of the ICT industry triggered a transformation of the cluster towards a new growth path with stronger symbolic components. Cluster transformation was facilitated by policy actions that promoted a diversification of knowledge bases in the region. The strategy was to combine existing competences in ICT with new competences in media and design, and to develop new activities around the theme of New Media, which integrates analytical, synthetic and symbolic knowledge. We show that the endowment of the RIS of a variety of knowledge bases and their combination has essentially supported long-term cluster development and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The built environment and the way in which it is understood critically affect many business enterprises. Despite its importance, few studies have explicitly investigated the process through which changes to the built environment are introduced into ongoing businesses. To this end the methodological principles of the sociology of translation (ANT) were employed to generate a historical account of one such change process. Specifically, the account describes how a major Swedish food wholesaler introduced one-storey warehouses into their operations. This introduction was linked to a transformation of the warehouse as such: in the 1940s the wholesaler viewed its warehouses as symbols ('outward signs of inner strength') while ideas from the US suggested another identity—that of a tool for wholesale operations. The efforts of the wholesaler to realize this new identity included investments in metrologies, organization schemes, and concrete, suggesting that theoretical perspectives on objects are not generally applicable but require perspective-specific investments in 'words and their worlds'. Viewing the realization of an object-perspective as a performation struggle (Callon, 2007) it is suggested that this process of adjustment unfolds through interplay between presenting and re-presenting the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]