Nick Clifton

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Cardiff Metropolitan University

The number of self-employed, freelancers, and remote workers has risen steadily; simultaneously a range of collaborative shared workspaces – coworking spaces – has emerged rapidly in which these individuals ‘work alone together’. However, existing research is skewed towards the community aspect of coworking, treated largely as an end in itself and...

Coworking has increased in popularity in the digital knowledge economy with the rise of independent professional workers who often work from home and lack the social relations that provide feedback, referrals or social support. Rather than studying coworking as a new spatial, social and economic way of working in designated coworking spaces, this s...

Previous studies of the locational patterns of European creative workers typically neglect their lower mobility, focusing on a simplistic "attraction and retention" logic. They largely fail to consider the heterogeneity of places and people, disregarding the basic human functions that connect people to their environment. Our objective is to propose...

With an orientation on sustainability and economic growth, the concept of circular economy (CE) emerges to tackle socio-environmental challenges. Current literature has provided important frameworks from CE operations and business model perspectives. However, in practice, companies are still facing the challenges of insufficient knowledge, lack of...

This paper investigates how top-down policy direction setting is interpreted and implemented within horizontal networks of practice. This is an under-investigated issue, yet vital for delivering ultimately transformative outcomes. It seeks to unpack how actionable directionality can influence progress and introduces the idea of nascent or partial m...

Studying inter-regional knowledge exchange has recently shifted to a more systematic analysis of regional groups of actors, defined as a knowledge network of regions, which have grown rapidly in number and impact. Although arbitrary or top-down decisions on network membership often result in low commitment and inefficient use of time and financi...

This chapter considers the ways that the concept of Circular Economy (CE) might be redefined within the innovation ecosystem. We argue that a key policy goal should be to mainstream CE innovation, that is, to get more SMEs doing CE innovation rather than purely focusing on improving the innovation outcomes of existing CE SMEs. To do so, a CE innova...

The recent growth of transnational municipal networks requires a better understanding of their evolution. For some actors, this growth has resulted in arbitrary or top‐down decisions on network membership followed by low commitment and inefficient use of time and financial resources. By reinterpreting secondary data through an evolutionary approach...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently advised that “climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet” (2023, p.6). This threat underlines the importance of developing businesses innovation capabilities and implementing Circular Economy (CE) principles. Organisations that have developed inno...

This paper explores the effectiveness of regional intervention strategies aimed at enhancing 'low-tech' SMEs' sustainable competitive advantage and innovation activities, employing the food sector in Wales (UK) as a case study. It utilizes the triple helix model to analyse these interventions, emphasising collaboration between government, academia,...

Extensive research has explored organisational dynamics across various sectors in relation to circular economy (CE) innovation practices. However, a critical gap exists in understanding CE innovation activities in the public sector versus the third sector. This distinction is crucial as the third sector’s role in CE innovation is growing, necessita...

Project HELIX 2016-2020 was developed and implemented in Wales, to improve technical and safety/science knowledge; and sustainable innovation in food manufacturing small to medium enterprises (SMEs). The paper aims to place Project HELIX within the wider context of regional and food sector development and then examine the project's rationale and de...

This study contributes to the extant literature on the leveraging of event portfolios, by applying the Model of Event Portfolio Tourism Leverage (Ziakas, 2023) to a case study of the Volvo Ocean Race in Cardiff, United Kingdom. Through an examination of the various components of the model, the research demonstrates the value of the strategies and t...

Drivers of environmental change and policy processes are pushing the sub-Saharan African region to do more in the struggle against climate change as the region suffers most from climate change impact. To this end, this study investigates how the interaction effects of a sustainable financing model in energy use influence carbon emissions in Sub-Sah...

This report conducted a ‘Scoping and Feasibility Study for a new Foundational Economy Academy’ in Wales, during the first quarter of 2022. We explored how to effectively enhance the Foundational Economy (FE) capability of public service practitioners and learn lessons from the celebrated Preston Model. The report conducted primary research and revi...

This ‘thought piece’ considers ways in which the concept of Circular Economy (CE) might be redefined within the innovation ecosystem. The findings of this report suggest that a distinction needs to be made between the innovation activities of circular economy SMEs as opposed to SMEs undertaking CE innovation, and that a CE programme for SMEs should...

Regional Triple Helix Food Sector Small to Medium Enterprise initiatives in Wales, United Kingdom: The transition from the KITE project to Project HELIX. 2008 - 2020

Despite the evidence of deteriorating environmental quality, the economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa depends on investing in the energy industry to accommodate the rising power demand. Specifically, the economies of Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa have made significant progress in strengthening their macroeconomic policies since the turn of the...

Purpose Coworking (shared flexible working spaces) grew exponentially before the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis led to spaces closing but demand is likely to increase as homeworking/remote working levels remain permanently higher post-pandemic. Previous studies largely focused on ‘satisfied customers’ – freelancers and entrepreneurs in the urban cor...

Coworking spaces—shared work-spaces in which freelancers, entrepreneurs, but also employees ‘work alone together’—are presented as an example of the blurring of spaces within the knowledge economy. These are spaces in which key current issues (digitalization, knowledge flows, flexibility and innovation) play out at the micro level. Post-pandemic, c...

The digital “4th Space” is a development of Oldenburg’s delineation of the 1st (home), 2nd place (work) and 3rd (social) places. Coworking spaces are presented as an example of space blurring within the knowledge economy, where digitalization, knowledge flows, flexibility and innovation play out at the micro level. Post-pandemic, they are likely to...

This study investigates how an innovation intermediary - an organisation whose remit is to broker relationships between “seekers” (of challenges or problems, typically larger firms) and the “providers” (of ideas and potential solutions, SMEs, freelancers, universities) in a “matchmaking” process. Moreover, the influence of these innovation intermed...

Whereas interregional networks of individual actors have recently received growing attention, networks in terms of collective regional groups of organisations interacting with their counterparts remain largely ignored. This is surprising given the Smart Specialisation agenda's ‘outward looking’ approach. This conceptual paper explores the rationale...

The work was commissioned under the Senedd Research COVID-19 Expert Register scheme, through which academics assist the Senedd with its work on the impacts of the COVID-19. The EIS Committee requested the study to inform its inquiry on Remote Working: Implications for Wales, which it undertook following the Welsh Government announcing a long-term...

This paper studies entrepreneurship ecosystem development in a context little discussed in the extant literature to date: Oman. Specifically, it focuses on business incubation (BI) initiatives as a policy tool for developing the local, regional, and national systems of supporting entrepreneurship and SME growth. Although BI’s are a popular policy m...

The collated evidence in this paper provides a basis for understanding the spatial implications of homeworking and the potential for local coworking (working in shared workspaces) and the promotion of community working hubs. Findings that are drawn from a number of rapidly available data sources in January 2021 suggest that Wales will be well-place...

Competition and day‐to‐day firefighting prevents small businesses from undertaking the most effective types of strategic planning and networking for growth and innovation. Poor or inappropriate execution of these activities highlights the need for targeted managerial training. Potential explanations for the weak growth of many SMEs focus on the lim...

This Hodge Research Project Report on productivity gathers new evidence on management practices against the background of a low productivity economy. Section 1 sets the scene. Seventy-four companies were interviewed to assess factors like: (1) the types of objectives firms set; (2) the strategies they use to achieve these objectives; (3) the perfor...

Introduction The German economy has long been seen as a bastion of family owned, medium-sized, enterprise success, also referred to as the ‘mittelstand’(Law, 2011). The success stories of companies such as Bosch (Schaefer, 2011)and Koenig & Meyer (Bayley, 2017) has led to the European aspiration to emulate this German achievement (Pahnke and Welte...

This report is part of the Hodge Research Project and draws on an analysis of the results of a survey of a broad range of businesses in Wales. It seeks to provide a better understanding of how firms’ management practices affect the productivity puzzle whereby Wales lags other countries.

This paper addresses the key question as to what matters more in understanding the residential location of the creative class in Slovenia: the city-region or the urban-rural framework? Our analysis shows that differences in residential concentrations of the creative class vary more within city-regions (on an urban-rural framework) than between city...

The aim of the chapter is to increase the knowledge regarding the methods and styles of learning used by women entrepreneurs in general, and in South East Wales and Malaysia in particular. The research question is What methods and styles of learning do women entrepreneurs employ in their businesses, in general, and specifically in SE Wales and Mala...

This chapter explores the concern of inequalities in human history and throughout the globe. It aims to be a holistic perspective upon the inequality phenomenon with its multi-faceted aspects. The authors analyze capitalism and its main inequalities and question the origin of inequalities, their determinants, and their evolution across the history...

This paper explores the role of non-state nations’ identity and agency with regard to relations with their host nation states. The particular focus here is on the means by which such regions might express their individuality. To this end, we employ a comparative case study analysis of two non-state nations with a range of differing yet in other way...

This entry applies the concept of corporate identity to geography, where, due to competition and standardization in globalizing markets, authenticity and also quality of life have become increasingly important. Even if a corporation does not have one identity or one image, these are manageable, but cities and regions have many internal and external...

This chapter develops the concept of the county of origin effect, and explores how linkages between placeand product may impact upon it. Country-of-origin research has tended to focus upon how geographicalassociations may assist the marketing of certain products (halo effects) and indeed protect brand imagesfrom negative place-based associations (s...

This chapter develops the concept of the county of origin effect, and explores how linkages between place and product may impact upon it. Country-of-origin research has tended to focus upon how geographical associations may assist the marketing of certain products (halo effects) and indeed protect brand images from negative place-based associations...

Final Report: ESRC NEMODE Open Call, scoping project

The intertwining of economic crises and political violence has been an ongoing narrative for Northern Ireland over the past four decades. However, with the end of ‘The Troubles’ and the transition to what has been termed a ‘post-conflict’ society (i.e. one in which the violence has largely ceased but its legacy remains), what is an appropriate agen...

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ceps20/current

Objectives: The project is focused on what a US-style Small Business Administration (SBA) might look like in Wales, and thus what might be the best model to provide comprehensive business support in Wales. Prior Work: Supporting SMEs has become an important component of policies to promote sustainable competitive advantage particularly post-2008...

The 20Twenty Leadership Programme was developed by Cardiff Metropolitan University as an executive education programme to be delivered within South Wales to small businesses. It is funded by the European Social Fund, administered by the Welsh European Funding Office and has the key aim of developing small and medium sized enterprises’ growth potent...

Co-working is a broad term that has been rapidly expanding in recent years. The term refers to the practice of working “alongside each other” in a flexible and shared office environment where desks can be rented on a different basis and where like-minded professionals form a community. In recent years co-working spaces have been successfully devel...

This paper examines the role of entrepreneurial firms as agents of economic resilience. It focuses on the networks these firms construct with universities in order to access knowledge for innovation. Drawing on data from a cohort of entrepreneurial firms in the United Kingdom and the United States it is found that networks between entrepreneurial f...

Office work has traditionally been associated with administrative and intellectual production. The demand for more timely information and a quest for ever greater productivity has led to the changes in the workspace through the centuries. Our workplaces have become more functional and productive, but also subsequently places of interaction and soci...

Nations and regions have images, or “brands” that stakeholders often attempt to manage or at least influence. In turn, many products have an association with a region or place, sometimes positively, and sometimes negatively so. These associations interact and shape each other. In this paper we thus argue that for a holistic view of country-of-origi...

The interplay between place, individuals and creativity has, in recent years, received much attention. National differences of how capitalism is organized can be drawn into this discussion, but they are seldom examined systematically. By investigating data from the UK as a liberal market economy and Sweden as a coordinated market economy, this pape...

Festivals and special events are increasingly encouraged by urban policy makers as driving local (and regional) economic and cultural regeneration, with the consequent justification of public investment therein. This has led to an emerging need for deeper understanding of their contribution, and for evaluation beyond the purely economic. In order t...

Knowledge sourcing from external sources has become increasingly important to small firms, which cannot generate internally all the knowledge necessary for new product and process development. Small firms are often more sensitive to the proximity of knowledge sources than larger firms. However, accessing knowledge sourcing from international source...

In the modern consumer economy, the intangible or symbolic qualities of a product play a decisive role in its success or otherwise in the market place. Moreover, this applies to places as well as to physical products. This in turn poses a key research question—how can regions establish and maintain their distinctiveness in an ever more globalized a...

Abstract The automotive and electronics industries within the UK have seen dramatic changes over the past two decades, reflected by culture changes for the organisations within them. This paper examines,the issues surrounding two,case study firms in the South Wales electronics and automotive components cluster, who are attempting to change their co...

Abstract Over the past two decades Wales has been quite successful in developing industrial clusters in automotive components and electronics, but is still relatively weak in areas thought important to long term manufacturing competitiveness, notably Research and Development (R&D). This paper examines,issues surrounding,R&D and more,specifically Ne...

This paper seeks to make a link between the concepts of competitiveness and the ‘creative class’ at a place-based level. The paper explores the relationship between creativity and competitiveness at the local level across the UK using a rural – urban framework. A growing competitiveness divide between rural and urban areas is found. Also, the creat...

Commercial aerospace is a key sector in the Welsh economy, engaged in complex overlapping activities from aircraft manufacture (AM), through maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), to research, development and training (RDT). Defining and operationalizing a framework for analysis using both qualitative and quantitative data, this paper examines the...

This paper presents research examining the effects of network interaction and small medium sized enterprise (SME) performance, with particular regard to the accessing of knowledge for innovation. Economic development policy is increasingly focused on SMEs, creating a clear research issue in terms of the roles and interactions of support bodies and...

The 20Twenty Leadership Programme business survey was distributed in 2010. The survey forms part of the 20Twenty Leadership Programme developed to help business leaders in the South East Wales Competitiveness area to develop their potential and direct their companies towards successful growth. The role this survey plays in the programme is to infor...

It is increasingly understood that learning and thus innovation often occurs via highly interactive, iterative, network-based processes. Simultaneously, economic development policy is increasingly focused on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as a means of generating growth, creating a clear research issue in terms of the roles and interacti...

Executive summary Drawing knowledge from external – especially international – sources has become increasingly important to small and medium-sized firms (SMEs). As these firms cannot generate all they need to know to develop new products and processes within their own companies, they need to look elsewhere for new ideas and expertise. This is what...

This special issue is concerned with developing a better understanding of the dynamics which affect the relationship between creative industries and their geographical context. A wide literature has attempted to explain the general characteristics of ‗creative places', nevertheless there is still little knowledge of the micro-interactions that crea...

Much of the recent interest in the development of individual creativity has drawn upon Richard Florida's (2002a) book The Rise of the Creative Class. Whereas in the industrial age, classical and neoclassical economic theory told us that people followed jobs, in the modern knowledge economy Florida describes how jobs follow talented people. The rese...

Universities are increasingly encouraged to take a leading role in economic development, particularly through innovation. Simultaneously, economic development policy itself is increasingly focused on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), creating overlapping interactions in the roles of government policy, universities and SMEs and the processe...

Based on the research manual (D9) seven regions in Europe have been analysed. This research is thus mainly based on the following steps: (1) Conducting of 30 case studies by each partner in each region (a total of 210 case studies). These studies include the analyses of written enterprise reports, rules, commitments (i.e. CSR Reports, Codes of Ethi...

Richard Florida argues that regional economic outcomes are tied to the underlying conditions that facilitate creativity and diversity. Thus the Creative Class thesis suggests that the ability to attract creativity and to be open to diverse groups of people of different ethnic, racial and lifestyle groups provides distinct advantages to regions in g...

Current research suggests that the process of knowledge creation is both networked and iterative. Synthesising the literature highlights a range of factors for analysis in knowledge-based industries. These factors are then used to examine the biotechnology sector in Queensland Australia, utilising available secondary literature, interviews with a r...

Festivals and special events are increasingly encouraged by urban policy makers as driving local (and regional) economic and cultural regeneration, with the consequent justification of public investment therein. This has led to an emerging need for deeper understanding of their contribution, and for evaluation beyond the purely economic. In order t...

The purpose of this study is to examine the types and extent of social enterprise in rural regional Wales, and the suitability of government policy towards rural social entrepreneurs. The rural unitary authority area of Ceredigion is surveyed to examine the number and type of social entrepreneurs and their experiences in dealing with government pol...

Seeing the wood for the trees: clustering for competitiveness in the Welsh timber sector

Cooke P. and Clifton N. (2005) Visionary, precautionary and constrained 'varieties of devolution' in the economic governance of the devolved UK territories, Regional Studies 39 , 437-451. This paper explores economic development financing and action, an important policy arena if lesser expenditure field in the devolved administrations. It sets evol...

Cooke P., Clifton N. and Oleaga M. (2005) Social capital, firm embeddedness and regional development, Regional Studies 39 , 1065-1077. This paper presents the results of a research project examining the effects of social capital on the performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in 12 UK regions. It first investigates the association...

The chapter reports the results of a large-scale survey, accompanied by a sample of face-to-face and telephone interviews, into the role of social capital in the economic performance of SMEs in the UK. The survey and interviews were undertaken to examine how firms engage in formal and informal partnerships based on mutual trust, exchanging favours...

Explores the role of social capital in the performanceof small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Following a review of theempirical and theoretical literature on social capital, the results of a surveyof 455 manufacturing and service SMEs in the twelve regions of the UnitedKingdom are presented.Data from interviews with a representative sampleof...

This report provides a ‘rough guide’ to the Scottish Innovation System (SIS). A key focus is the identification of the main actors, their roles in the system, and the level of system interaction. An evaluation of system strengths and weaknesses is provided at the end of this Executive Summary and in Section 8 of the report. The report stems from...

The automotive and electronics industries of the UK have seen dramatic changes over the past two decades, reflected in cultural change by the organisations within them. This paper examines issues surrounding two case studies of firms in the electronics and automotive components sectors of South Wales, who are attempting to change their organisation...

A major challenge facing Welsh speciality Small and Medium‐sized Agri‐food Enterprises (SMAFEs) is how to sustain growth in a global market. This can be enhanced through e‐commerce and the marketing of product through the Internet to an international audience. Recent research carried out by the Welsh Enterprise Institute (WEI) found that there may...

This paper is concerned with UK-based automotive component suppliers that have commenced the supply of a “complete system” to a vehicle assembler (VA) in recent years. The wider restructuring of VA-supplier relations occurring in the UK automotive industry is taken asthe context for this research – reference is made to the requirements of lean and...

'West Wales and the Valleys' now qualify for EU Objective One status, entitled to draw down up to 1.3 billion in EU funds, matched from public and private sources between 2000 and 2006. However, there are many issues raised by the process of organizing the subsequent programme. There are questions over policy focus in the economically diverse Objec...

The chapter reviews the critical success factors, which will enable Small and Medium-sized Agri-food enterprises and Agri-tourism enterprises in Wales to implement innovative product development and processes in order to sustain competitive advantage.

Over the past two decades Wales has been relatively successful in attracting inward investment, and in developing industrial clusters in automotive components and electronics. However the Welsh economy, in general, is still relatively weak in several areas thought to be important to long term regional competitiveness, such as education, entrepreneu...