The Economic Value of Knowledge: Embodied in Goods or Embedded in Cultures?

Regional Studies. Tacit' knowledge is a fuzzy concept - a kind of never opened black box - that has not allowed understanding about how knowledge gives birth to monetary income, or to regional development. This paper proposes a distinction between substantial and significant knowledge. While the former refers to knowledge being sold and bought like a good or embodied in goods on the basis of ownership, the latter claims that knowledge workers, firms or communities are remunerated following the institution of authorship, i.e. their capacity to create meaning. This would be a central institution in an increasingly culture-based economy. A typology of regional knowledge-anchoring milieus is then built on this distinction. This paper is a qualitative meta-synthesis of 23 case studies realized in the EURODITE project.