publications
Peer-review published articles.
2026
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Concentration and co-localization dynamics of technological innovation: The Japanese caseSebastián Baeza-González and Natsuki KamakuraApplied Geography, 2026Spatial patterns of innovation and inventive activities are a significant topic in economic geography, as many studies try to unveil the relationship between innovation and proximity. Understanding patterns of concentration and dispersion in space and the spatial relationship across technological categories becomes essential to reveal the characteristics of knowledge sources and flow. This study aims to characterize the spatial patterns of inventive activity in Japan. Using patent data, we identify concentration patterns using point data and a relative concentration (Kemp) measure. We also assess spatial co-localization and co-dispersion by using the same indicator. These results cross-classify technologies by their concentration and co-localization characteristics and potential knowledge sources and flows, questioning the relevance of national innovation policy in concentration and co-localization patterns. Therefore, the analysis focused on two periods, 1975–1994 and 1995–2014, related to major changes in the national innovation policy. Our analysis reveals that between the two periods, Japan’s inventive geography shifted from a highly integrated system to more specialized, isolated clusters. Specifically, the later period demonstrates an increase in spatial concentration within technologies while showing a decline in co-localization across different fields. The importance of this trend is evident, as regionalization policies appear to have successfully promoted local specialization, strengthening regional/local capabilities, but have also resulted in a reduction of regional technological diversity. This situation raises concerns about an increased risk of technological lock-in and the potential decline in breakthrough innovations that depend on broader knowledge flows.
2025
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Telecoupled social–ecological systems: the case of avocado in ChileA. M. D. Ortiz, S. Baeza-González, M. Jensen, and 3 more authorsGlobal Sustainability, 2025Non-Technical Summary.Avocados are a widely consumed fruit and are part of many Latin American cuisines and plant-based diets globally. However, producing avocados is water-intensive, and plantations can cause soil erosion and water stress. In Chile, avocados are produced in semiarid zones and require irrigation. They are widely consumed locally but are increasingly exported to meet growing global demand. This causes significant local conflicts over water, especially because of the system of private water rights in Chile. There are many gaps in understanding the complex and interconnected system of avocado production and international markets, especially its impacts on local communities and biodiversity.Technical Summary.The popularity of avocados has increased globally in alternative diets, alongside its integral role in Latin American cuisine. In Chile, avocados are grown extensively and intensively in orchards in the dry and Mediterranean climate of Central Chile. Avocado is a water-demanding crop and the severe water crisis in Chile has called attention to the conflicts caused by its water use. As most of the pressure to produce avocado comes from international demand but results in impacts on native ecosystems and local communities, avocado production in Chile is an example of a telecoupled system. Here, we characterize avocado production as a telecoupled social–ecological system in order to identify gaps in knowledge, based on a review of key studies. Research priorities include how to improve water-use efficiency, especially in the context of climate change; the impacts on biodiversity; and the socioeconomic dynamics between local communities, trade, and governance. The analysis is constrained by limited access to data and few interdisciplinary studies on the matter. To reduce the impacts of avocado production and increase its sustainability, there is an urgent need to amplify the interdisciplinary research that emphasizes the interconnections between the social and ecological components in avocado production in Chile.Social Media Summary.Global avocado demand fuels local conflicts in Chile due to water stress and social–ecological pressures on communities.
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A methodological framework for tracing cluster life cycles: emerging hot spot analysis in evolutionary economic geographySebastián Baeza-González and Natsuki KamakuraEvolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, 2025This article presents a methodological approach employing Emerging Hot Spot Analysis (EHSA) to track the life cycles of clusters of inventive activity. Evolutionary Economic Geography seeks to elucidate the spatial development of economic activity by analyzing past formations and their impact on current and future trends. We enhance this literature by offering an explanation of cluster life cycles through EHSA. EHSA is a spatial statistical methodology that integrates Getis-Ord Gi* and Mann–Kendall trend assessments to examine spatiotemporal variability. We analyze inventive activity utilizing Japanese patent data from 1980 to 2020 across the chemical, mechanical, computers and communications, and electrical and electronics broad technological categories. EHSA provides a statistical test to analyze the stages of a cluster’s life (emergence, growth, maturity, and decline) by finding patterns like new, intensifying, persistent, or diminishing hot/cold spots. Results indicate varying trajectories among technology categories: chemicals demonstrate post-growth decline; mechanicals are stable and expand; computers and communications remain confined to metropolitan areas; and electrical and electronics sectors bifurcate. The research underscores EHSA’s efficacy in delivering a reproducible and flexible approach to visualize and comprehend clustering dynamics from spatiotemporal data, hence facilitating informed policymaking. Nonetheless, it recognizes constraints, as cluster evolution encompasses more than mere agglomeration, indicating the need for future integration with network analysis and qualitative data for a thorough comprehension.
2024
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Identifying multiple configurations in global innovation system (GIS): lessons from the salmon farming industryJoaquin Zenteno Hopp, Sebastián Baeza-González, and Svein Gunnar SjøtunEuropean Planning Studies, 2024The global innovation system (GIS) approach has until now focused on defining industries by a single GIS configuration at a given time. However, by analysing 739 innovation projects in the Norwegian global salmon farming industry, we find that the four ideal GIS configurations can be identified simultaneously. We argue that this is because we refer to an industry with a large diversity of innovation projects generating different resources along varied scales of interaction. Our analysis is based on text analysis of descriptive documents and interviews about innovation projects. With this information, we built four GIS configurations that illustrate how actors, networks and institutions form and are connected through different types of subsystems. The purpose is to understand why some actors have diverse priorities when participating in different types of innovation projects within the same industry and suggest relevant policy ideas.
2023
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Neostructural innovation and directionality in Chilean salmon aquacultureJonathan R. Barton, Sebastián Baeza-González, Joaquín Zenteno Hopp, and 1 more authorMarine Policy, 2023The recent work of Mariana Mazzucato on the role of public funding in economic development seeks to rebalance debates on innovation to highlight the role of the State, as opposed to the dominant narrative of unregulated private initiative. This is particularly relevant for the case of the Chilean salmon industry where, besides the diffusion of technology and management practices by a combination of international agencies and private initiatives, its boom has been supported by considerable national public funding since the 1970s and especially after the transition to democracy in 1990. In this regard, the main argument of this paper is that the innovation system of the Chilean salmon industry should be understood within a neostructural model of economic development. However, although the State has had an essential role in financing and promoting innovation, we found that it has not served as a guiding entity (directionality) for how innovation should be undertaken. This is important to recognise since it helps to explain why the Chilean salmon industry has been able to direct innovation towards its own economic interests without attending to broader social issues related to its operations, despite this public expenditure. The main conclusion is that, due to the type of knowledge developed and how innovations are valued within the sector’s innovation system, the goal is to increase volume, reduce costs, and marginally mitigate negative socio-ecological externalities.
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Unravelling sustainable salmon aquaculture: an historical political ecology of a business responsibility discourse, 1970–2020Jonathan R. Barton, Sebastián Baeza-González, and Álvaro RománMaritime Studies, 2023How sustainable is salmon aquaculture? The criteria for responding to this question are set by different organisations, since the concept of sustainable aquaculture is a social construction and there are no agreed criteria for establishing this sustainability condition and its evolution. Using an historical political ecology perspective, this paper unravels the evolution of this social construction over the past 50 years in order to establish how sustainability, responsibility, and sustainable development have been (re)constructed over time in response to changing demands. These constructions are traced through scientific publications, business reports, international organisation literature, and in terms of regulatory and consumer pressures. The documents provide evidence of the ways in which the sector evolved a particular conception of sustainability alongside the emerging global agenda set in motion by the Stockholm Conference of 1972, precisely at a time when the collapse of many capture fisheries became evident and aquaculture was presented as a more sustainable alternative. The conclusions point to the importance, for the sector, of restricting the sustainability concept to a narrow definition of business responsibility based on eco-efficiency, bio-security, and innovation, and separating this responsibility from the broader-based concept of sustainable development promoted by most UN agencies, governments, and NGOs.
2022
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Constraints and Opportunities in Mapping Japanese Patent InformationSebastián Baeza-González and Natsuki KamakuraKomaba Studies in Human Geography, 2022Economic geographers and innovation studies, in general, have paid much attention to the formation, distribution, and dynamics of knowledge in space for decades. Some of this analysis uses patent information as a proxy to understand these issues, particularly as a source for spatializing knowledge creation and innovation. In this article, we use patent information to identify clusters in different technology domains in Japan. We conduct this exercise to grasp the methodological constraints and opportunities of using the Japan Patent Office Database (IIP Patent Database) and compare these results to other widely used databases (the United States Patent and Trademark Office Database - USPTO Database). We aim to bring a more comprehensive discussion on the usability of patent information for geographically oriented analysis and, mainly, raise the attention of other scholars on the challenges in working with raw spatial data. Our discussion identifies constraints regarding the inventor’s address data and patent technology classification. Similarly, we propose opportunities for future research that value the possibilities for replicability (freeuse databases) and highlight some solutions for the constraints. Additionally, our spatial autocorrelation analysis found only positive autocorrelation in one technology domain. We discuss this result in light of the raw database cleaning method and analysis.
2021
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Techno-dependencies in video games production: A Chilean case studySebastián Baeza-GonzálezGeoforum, 2021In recent years video games have become one of the major entertainment industries in the world, attracting millions of players and thousands of companies worldwide to virtual and non-virtual platforms. Middle-income countries such as Chile look at video games and other service sectors as viable industries to promote in the context of their economies, which currently rely on high specialisation in the extraction of natural resources and low value-added manufacturing products. However, a question must be asked: is the video games sector in Chile in danger of repeating similar patterns of dependency showed by those extractive-based industries? The following article explores this issue, deploying a Latin American dependency theory perspective combined with new insights from cognitive capitalism literature. Two main contributions derive from the analysis. First, the use of dependency theory and related literature is still valuable when it comes to understanding the conditions of technological dependency in highly-innovative sectors. Secondly, the analysis of video games sector development in Chile in itself contributes to digital games research and economic geography, as peripheral territories such as Chile are frequently ignored in the ongoing critical and policy discourse of creative/digital industries. Deploying semi-structured interviews with Chilean game developers and governmental agencies, the article evidence forms of dependency on the use of non-proprietary technological tools (game engines and software development kits – SDKs) and the protection of intellectual property (IP) in the centre (publishing schemes).
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Video games development in the periphery: cultural dependency?Sebastián Baeza-GonzálezGeografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 2021Video games developers engage with their creations, and games in general, in profoundly emotional ways. Since the industry became a mass-market phenomenon, a growing body of research has emerged interrogating the connections between developers and the games they produce and how these connections relate to broader affective issues seen in the cultural and creative industries. Most of the research in this field focuses on core markets such as the United States (US), Europe and Japan, leaving a significant gap of empirical research in peripheral locations. While emotional and affective issues are also present in peripheral games development, games production in these locations is often influenced by core-like global cultural tropes. Drawing on ideas and concepts about immaterial labour and based on semi-structured interviews, the analysis shows that many Chilean developers often see Japanese and North American games as the primary source of inspiration. As a result, the periphery’s games are essentially locked into the tropes, themes, and core markets’ characters. While this might be viewed as disadvantageous, Chilean developers have identified this trait as a major strength when competing in the global game market.
2014
- Chile’s resource-based export boom and its outcomes: Regional specialization, export stability and economic growthJohannes Rehner, Sebastian Baeza, and Jonathan BartonGeoforum, 2014
In the resource-based, export-driven and steadily growing economy of Chile, neither the revenues nor the negative effects of exports are distributed evenly in space. Accordingly, export specialization patterns in Chile must be analyzed on a regional scale to understand the relationships between export diversification, economic growth and dependency. We analyze how the degree of export specialization among Chile’s regions is linked to regional GDP growth and to regional export growth. Moreover, by taking a long-term perspective, we can evaluate these relationships during a phase of strong national currency and in the context of an external ‘‘shock’’. Our analysis applies the theoretical frameworks of the ‘resource curse’ and ‘Dutch disease’ on a regional geographical scale. We identify a tendency towards increased export specialization that is linked in part to high volatility of both GDP growth and export growth. There is also evidence of a growing dependence of Chilean regional economies on export trade. The 1991–2010 period covered by the analysis provides evidence of how external factors, such as high commodity prices and low US dollar exchange rates, foster specialization and weaken non-mineral exports in relative terms, especially in the highly specialized mineral-based regions of Chile. This result is consistent with the application of the Dutch disease thesis on a regional scale. Our analysis also shows the negative short-term effect of an external demand crisis on the mineral export sector and on highly specialized regions. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for a regional perspective on exports and on the effects of external factors within the country.