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The North East of England has entered the global bazaar in which its landscape, once pock marked by the scars of industries like coalmining, shipbuilding and steelmaking, has been cleaned up, beautified, and it has now entered the global competition between post-industrial places for inward investment and the spoils of the ever-expanding UK tourism industry. With this, the North East’s visitor economy now generates around £3.6 billion of expenditure each year, supporting some 54,600 jobs in 2018. The visitor economy is not only important as a stand-alone sector in the North East, but is integral to the whole North East economy, and needs to be a major driver of social change and diversification within it. As the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative says: the twenty first century North East is a place of vibrancy, with a quality of life that makes it a great place to visit, live and work, study and invest – which is a strapline narrative that clearly signals how tourism is indeed both an essential and integrated part of North East life. Brexit may provide the North East tourism industry with a stronger global stage.

This chapter charts the logic of that development and asks: is it a good thing, who benefits and who loses from the sectors development. It asks whose North East are we talking about as we prepare to enter what is anticipated to be a difficult and an uncertain third decade of the twenty-first century?

The North East has five universities: Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Teesside and Sunderland as well as over 20 colleges. The five universities in the region employ over 14,000 staff and generate another 15,000 jobs through their activities (Universities UK, 2014). In total their activities generate gross value added (GVA) of nearly £1.6 billion, equivalent to 3.8% of the total 2011 North East GVA (Universities UK, 2014). This is higher than in any other region of England meaning that any post-Brexit funding threat to the UK university sector represents a disproportionately greater threat to the North East economy.

This chapter looks specifically at the opportunities and threats for teaching and research of public administration and public services within the North East as a consequence of Brexit. Potential threats include the impact of any reduction in European funding (particularly research funding); reduction in the number of European students and reduction in the number of European staff working at universities in the North East. This chapter concludes by making the case for greater collaboration in teaching and research across UK and European universities. Irrespective of the final result of Brexit, pan-European research and teaching of public administration seems needed now more than ever. Northumbria University has a unique place within the North East region as a centre of expertise in public administration and public leadership.

In the UK regions that are structurally more vulnerable are less able to respond to economic shocks (McCann, 2017). An economic downturn for a poorer region like the North East of England (Jenkins, Pike, & Tomaney, 2019) will mean it enters recession earlier and emerges from recession later than significantly wealthier regions like London and South East region in England or Amsterdam City region in the Netherlands. We ask, what can be done to improve the impact of policy interventions that support and develop weaker regional economies? Behind this chapter sit two elements of research study: a question, which asks, what if you develop a “great” policy, that is well researched and designed; however, it fails because the people who deliver it don’t have the right culture, values, or knowledge? The second element is that the authors are interested in a range of factors that affect not only policy implementation including entrepreneurship but also economic culture and social capital, looking at the problem from different disciplinary viewpoints (Baker & Welter, 2018). This chapter makes a comparative study between the North East of England and the Amsterdam City region to explore how policy implementation might be improved as other factors of place cannot be easily altered, these factors include major infrastructure, political systems, and budgetary control as well as overall economic wealth. What this means is that practical research and studies have to find factors that can be improved in order to achieve change and a greater economic impact on Places in this context, the North East of England.

Reports on a mission to north‐east India undertaken in September 1996 with a view to developing a joint research programme on sustainability of land use in that area. Describes the mission, the travel involved and the nature of the agreement which was reached with members of the North‐East Hill University, Mizoram Campus and with participants of Arunachal University. Identifies priority areas for future research as sustainable agriculture and use of forestry resources with the mission focus of attention being on Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. States that the majority of the population in north‐eastern Indian states consists of tribal people, many of whom still engage in shifting agriculture and are still very dependent on forest resources for their livelihood. Explains that, owing to rising populations and the desire for higher incomes, traditional practices in agriculture and forest use in this part of India are no longer sustainable, noting that the incomes of local people and their way of life are therefore threatened and there is urgent need for research to find new alternatives.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate farmers’ risk aversion using the equally likely certainty equivalent approach and the negative exponential utility function to identify risk preference classification.

Stochastic efficiency with respect to a function is applied to determine the risk efficient farming systems for the farmers in central and north-east regions of Thailand.

The study results showed that maize followed by sorghum is the most risk efficient farming system for the extremely risk averse rain-fed farmers in the central region of Thailand. Intensive planting of wet rice and dry rice cultivation is preferred by the extremely risk averse central region irrigated farmers. Wet rice and cassava together with raising small herd of cattle is the most economically viable farming system for the extremely risk averse rain-fed farmers in the north-east region, while two rice crops with raising cattle is preferred by the extremely risk averse north-east irrigated farmers of Thailand.

The findings of this study provide useful information to reinforce the empirical basis for risk analysis for Thai farmers. The results will provide more accurate information regarding risk at the farm level to policy makers and researchers.

The Institute for Local Government is a research and knowledge exchange partnership which was established to facilitate collaboration between some of the North East’s major public sector institutions and its academic community drawn from the region’s Universities.

This chapter presents a summary and reflection on its roles, activities, funding, outputs and outcomes, operational experience, the problems of long-term sustainability and the lessons that can be drawn from this pioneering initiative in the North East throughout the last decade and the implications for the next decade.

The spirit of our times is uncertain with scholars and practitioners agreeing that complex problems need more innovative multifaceted solutions. Now as we witness the potential demise of the political classes in the chaos that is Brexit, the challenges in the North East are unprecedented, unpredictable and difficult to untangle. It’s time for a different way of leading, managing and even thinking.

This chapter advocates a stronger Entrepreneurial Leadership for the development of bespoke North East strategies and argues we need to build capacity through collaboration across sectors to achieve better results in the decade ahead. This chapter presents a view of how the agenda for SME growth and development needs to change in the region in the period ahead. It suggests a stronger collaboration between the North East and northern universities could help to build a better Brexit strategy and more appropriate interventions.

This paper provides remarkable insight into the structural components of a firm's core competence and its development via research and development (R&D) activities for innovation and exporting activities.

The authors have used a positivist design and a deductive methodology. The authors have examined the extant literature developing a theoretical framework to empirically investigate the relationships between a firm's core competence, organisational learning (OL), tacitness, dynamic capability and R&D activities. To carry out this investigation, the authors have collected stratified sample data from 330 firms operating in North East England, a peripheral region of England.

The authors have found that there are indeed significant statistical relationships between these structural components, R&D activities and a firm's core competence, and this nexus is pertinent to innovation and exporting. Furthermore, it is found that North East England is significantly constrained by the lack of finance, technological capability, experts and brain drain. Based on these findings, the authors propose a cooperative R&D framework to narrow down these constraints to assist firms in developing core competencies for innovation and exporting in peripheral regions.

There is an urgent need to investigate the incidence of knowledge-driven activities, R&D, the extent of innovation and exporting activities of firms operating in North East England, a peripheral region of the United Kingdom (UK).

This study provides an original and systematic investigation of the firm's core competence and its formation via key structural components for innovation and exporting within an empirical framework.

This study provides an analysis of two regional samples on R&D activities in manufacturing small and medium‐size firms in the UK. The results show that there are statistically significant regional differences between the North East and the West Midlands (χr² of 11.8 s.s. at p < .01), where the North East SMEs seem to engage less in R&D activities. The results may be of some interest to the relevant R&D funding bodies.