The continued emphasis on innovation in urban and clustered settings has led many geographers to conceive peripheries as laggard and non-innovative. After reconstructing discussions of the periphery in the context of the geography of firm-level innovation, we argue that normative connotations should be stripped away, and that ‘periphery’ and ‘center’ are better understood as positions in a field. We draw upon concepts current in network theory and propose a relational definition of periphery as a distant, dispersed and disconnected position relative to a core within a field. A key distinction is made between the position of an actor in geographical space (location) and the position of an actor in a social network of relations. Combining geographic and network dimensions of an actor’s position, our aim in this article is to propose a dual core-periphery framework which provides the vocabulary and concepts to empirically scrutinize the role of periphery in innovation processes. Although we focus on the geography of innovation, this framework can be applied more broadly to discussions of peripherality.

中文翻译：

---

责任还是机会？重新概念化外围及其在创新中的作用

对城市和集群环境中创新的持续重视，导致许多地理学家认为周边地区落后且缺乏创新。在重构了企业层面创新地理背景下对边缘的讨论之后，我们认为应该剥离规范性内涵，并且更好地将“边缘”和“中心”理解为领域中的位置。我们借鉴了网络理论中的当前概念，并提出了外围的关系定义，即相对于领域内核心的遥远、分散和不连贯的位置。行动者在地理空间（位置）中的位置和行动者在社会关系网络中的位置之间存在关键区别。结合演员位置的地理和网络维度，我们在本文中的目的是提出一个双核心-外围框架，该框架提供词汇和概念，以经验性地审查外围在创新过程中的作用。虽然我们关注创新的地理，但这个框架可以更广泛地应用于边缘性的讨论。