Venture capital geographies

Supported by the Economy & Culture research cluster at Durham Geography, this workshop aims to explore ‘Venture Capital Geographies’ broadly conceived. Venture capital is a high-risk high-return sector of global finance that makes private equity investments in start-up firms. Centred in Silicon Valley and other financial and technology economy hubs, venture capital features in economic geography research into urban and regional clusters. But venture capital geographies are much, much more than this. Organizations across the globe including banks, pension funds and manufacturing corporations are increasingly in the venture capital business. Facilitating venture capital formation is also a feature of national and urban statecraft, such that policy and public spending is becoming venture capital investment. Venture capital is core to the ‘California ideology’ of entrepreneurship and innovation which arguably defines contemporary US hegemony and Western economic culture. Venture capitalists are leading philanthrocapitalists who fund charities and the arts and populate the management boards of trusts and civic institutions, including universities. And celebrity venture capitalists are prominent figures in popular culture, feted as ‘dragons’ and ‘sharks’ who act as the arbiters of ideas, enterprise, and the collective future.

The event schedule is as follows

Panel I (13.00 – 14.15)

"An exploration of state effects on the Lisbon innovation economy" Sandra Faustino (University of Lisbon), SOCIUS - Membros / Investigadores

“State-led venture capital investments and economic restructuring in Hefei, China” Kean Fan Lim (Newcastle University), Staff Profile | School of Geography, Politics and Sociology | Newcastle University

Panel II (14.30 – 15.45)

“The strange non-rise of venture capital in the UK”

David Kampmann (University of Oxford) and Nils Peters (London School of Economics) Dr David Kampmann | Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and Nils Peters

“VC funding, market domination and half-baked techno-solutionism for the broken soundscapes of global water infrastructure” Helen James (Durham), Helen James - Durham University

Durham Geography Roundtable Responses (16.00-17.00)

Sam Nowak, Owen Riley, Felicity Wray, Paul Langley.