新的信息和通信技术在经济发展中的作用不仅仅反映在它创造了一个新的产业部门,更重要的是它促进了知识的扩散、应用和创新。这使得信息时代的企业学习和创新过程,已经呈现出交织并存的两种模式:即在全球层次运作的跨国企业网络和在地方层次演进的企业集群网络。文章从信息和知识的角度,探讨信息时代的区域地理特征,以及信息和通信技术对产业空间组织的影响效应。重点分析全球生产网络和地方产业集群中的信息和知识过程,以及互联网技术所起的作用及其发展动态。

The role of new information and telecommunication technologies (ICTs)in the economic development is reflected not only in the creation of a new industrial sector, but more importantly on the spread promotion of knowledge, application and innovation, presenting two intertwined and coexisted models of the process of enterprises' learning and innovation in the information age:the transnational enterprise networks operating at the global level and the industrial cluster networks evolving at the local level. From the perspective of information and knowledge, this paper explores the geographic features of regions in the information age and the ICTs' effects on the industrial spatial organization, which focus on the process of information and knowledge in both global production networks (GPNs)and local industrial clusters, and the role of internet technology. GPNs have emerged as a major organizational innovation in global operations since 1990s. ICTs is one of the most important forces driving the shift in industrial organization from multinational corporations to GPNs. GPNs typically combine a sharp speed of geographic dispersion with spatial concentration. Besides, GPNs also act as powerful carriers of knowledge economy. Recent studies of new ICTs tend to suggest that engagement with the e-business technology is sequential and progressive, giving high hopes that the Internet and ICTs provide geographical clusters with new development opportunities. Finally, the paper suggests that both centralizing and dispersing dynamics exist in the spatial process of the changing organization driven by new ICTs. However, the combination of these two opposing forces and their roles are different at different scales and from different sectors.