I am soliciting paper proposals for a panel for the upcoming Business History Conference (Sacramento 4/10 – 4/12/2008) on entrepreneurial zones and swarming. Places or regions can become zones of innovation (e.g., British Midlands, Silicon Valley), which attract certain kinds of people and expertise – entrepreneurs, patent attorneys, venture capitalists, engineers. The results, as we know, can be dramatic.

My paper will be on a cohort of mid-19^th century entrepreneurs: Missouri bankers in the years immediately preceding the Civil War. A law passed by the Missouri legislature in 1857 to encourage the formation of new banks attracted a group of men who, within a few years, created a network of banks that extended over much of the state. The state had almost no banks prior to this time, and few of the new bankers had any previous experience in banking. Most of these men came from modest rural origins and had already moved geographically, occupationally, and socially multiple times.

Anyone interested in participating in this panel should contact me. Suitable paper topics could be other case studies; psychological and demographic profiles of people attracted to such places; factors of geography, technological breakthrough, legal climate, etc. that foster new zones; government attempts to encourage such development; and historical instances of technology transfer.

Mark Geiger
Postdoctoral Fellow
Minnesota Population Center
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities