The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Complexity thinking and evolutionary economic geography
Open accessAbstract
Thus far, most of the work towards the construction of an evolutionary economic geography has drawn upon a particular version of evolutionary economics, namely the Nelson-Winter framework, which blends Darwinian concepts and metaphors (especially variety, selection, novelty and inheritance) and elements of a behavioural theory of the firm. Much less attention has been directed to an alternative conception based on complexity theory, yet in recent years complexity theory has increasingly been concerned with the general attributes of evolutionary natural and social systems. In this article we explore the idea of the economic landscape as a complex adaptive system. We identify several key notions of what is being called the new ‘complexity economics’, and examine whether and in what ways these can be used to help inform an evolutionary perspective for understanding the uneven development and adaptive transformation of the economic landscape.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“Because of this inherent connectivity, non- linearity and openness, a complex system affords limited functional decomposability ( Martin & Sunley, 2007), which suggests that the overall functioning of the entrepreneurial ecosystem can -not be deduced from knowledge of its elements but instead requires knowledge of how these elements are interrelated.”
From Toward an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Research Program (2022) · cites this paper as Martin & Sunley, 2007
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Horgan, J. (1995) · Scientific American · doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0695-104 · Cited by 407
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Toward an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Research Program
Wurth, B., Stam, E., & Spigel, B. (2022) · Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice · doi:10.1177/1042258721998948 · Cited by 789
“Because of this inherent connectivity, non-linearity and openness, a complex system affords limited functional decomposability ( Martin & Sunley, 2007), which suggests that the overall functioning of the entrepreneurial ecosystem can - not be deduced from knowledge of its elements but instead…”
Metadata
- Authors
- Martin, R., & Sunley, P.
- Affiliations
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- University of Southampton (GB)
- ORCID
- Sunley, P.
- Venue
- Journal of Economic Geography
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2007-06-13
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 573-601
- ISSN
- 1468-2702 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2710
- OpenAlex
- W2145452789
- Cited by
- 490
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 33 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 30 · 2018: 35 · 2017: 30 · 2016: 30 · 2015: 36 · 2014: 33 · 2013: 32 · 2012: 27
- FWCI
- 46.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Economic Geography (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- ePrints Soton (University of Southampton) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economic Theory and Institutions
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Agglomeration and Urban Systems
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economic and Technological Innovation
- Keywords
- complexity economics, evolutionary economic geography, complex adaptive systems, economic landscape, evolutionary economics, complexity thinking, uneven development, adaptive transformation, behavioural theory of the firm
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Complexity thinking and evolutionary economic geography. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/jeg/lbm019
- The paper
- Martin, R., & Sunley, P. (2007). Complexity thinking and evolutionary economic geography. Journal of Economic Geography. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbm019
