Sammendrag
Evolutionary economic geography (EEG) is concerned with how economic activity has evolved in regions over time. Through concepts such as path dependency and regional diversification, most focus has been on understanding the change in economic activity. However, attention to the effects of the actions of micro-scale entities such as firms has yet to keep up with the developments in evolutionary economic geography. Acknowledging the importance agency of firms in economic development, this thesis focuses on the agency that corporate venture capitals (CVC) play in regional economic development. Innovation is a vital part of economic development. Firms historically rooted in a region continuously add new technologies and ideas to support and further capitalize on their already existing, incumbent business practices. In the long run, this may have implications on how a firm diversifies into sectors that relate to their current business practices, given that they may employ new technologies that steer certain firm activities in new directions. Through evolutionary economic geography literature, the long-run effects of such activities have been explored. This thesis initially aims to understand how the empirical practice of corporate venture capital decision-making can be understood by the evolutionary economic geography in Norway. Then this thesis aims to further explore how CVC activity plays a role in regional economic development, through industrial diversification and path dependency. In other words, the agency of CVCs in regional economic development will be explored and the following question will be posed: To what extent can the decision-making process in corporate venture capital investments be understood from the perspective of evolutionary economic geography? In order to understand empirical practices, 6 CVCs have been interviewed. These CVCs' parent companies can be classified into the following two categories: (i) energy, and industrial technologies, and manufacturing industries; (ii) service industries. After the interviews, related and unrelated variety, as well as open innovation theory was applied to the findings. The analysis showed that CVCs emerge as agents that enable learning between startups who develop new technologies and ideas, as well as invest and employ these new technologies and ideas to potentially diversify into related sectors. In the long run, this may have implications for regional diversification as well as path dependency.