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In this thesis we examine the organisation of the UK venture capital industry. We draw on literature from finance, innovation and economic geography in order to build a model to understand the relationship between the distribution of investment and regional resources. Using network theory we then extend this model in order to understand the structure of ties between actors in the venture capital investment process. Thus, we analyse the relationship between regional venture capital activity in the UK and a range of relevant regional resources. The thesis argues that patterns of investment activity in the UK are well established, with well defined regional concentrations, resulting from the geographically-embedded nature of venture capital. However, at a sector level, regional relationships between local resources and investment vary. We find that investment in biotechnology is less regionally embedded and strongly influenced by changes in local resources, such as R&D.

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This research is concerned with analysing a particular intersection of the financial system, the venture capital industry. It is based on a comparative study of two case study regions, the East Midlands and the North East of England which both secure low levels of venture capital investment relative to the rest of the UK. Using qualitative methods, this thesis studies entrepreneurs and professional finance agents who either supply finance or help entrepreneurs to seek it. This thesis has two aims. Firstly, it seeks to understand the dyn~mics that underpin finance gaps (i.e. mismatches in the supply and demand of finance) by unveiling the financial know ledges embodied by the different agents involved in lending, and examining the different money cultures in which they operate. .I argue that the production of finance gaps at the local level is far more complex and culturally nuanced than suggested by current research on regional development and venture capital suggest. I argue that finance gaps are underpinned by differences in the financial knowledges held by venture capitalists and entrepreneurs making it difficult for the two agents to intersect and do business together Secondly, using a relational approach this research aims to produce an alternative way of conceptualising the processes and practices of the venture capital industry by recasting it as a networked and stretched out construction. By tracing the relational networks of connections that venture capitalists in the North East and East Midlands maintain across space and at a distance, I produce a more intricate, subtle and spatially refined theorisation of the venture capital industry. In so doing, I escape the more territorially bounded studies of the industry where regions can be seen as spatial 'containers' in which venture capital investment takes place.

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Existing variance studies of venture capital (VC) provide an incomplete understanding of VC emergence, emphasizing either macro-level enabling conditions or the efficient fund-level operation of the VC cycle. While important, such perspectives do not provide for a complete understanding of the systemic, processual character of VC emergence. A multistage process model of emergence is developed, linking industry structural characteristics and their underlying processes to precursor resources through the intermediate processes of coproduction and diffusion. Using data from multiple embedded case studies in South Africa and Botswana, this model integrates four processes--simultaneity, coproduction, diffusion, and the VC cycle. These processes are linked by a logic that is dominated by initial conditions and includes elements of rational choice (conditioned by path dependence) and altruism. The establishment of appropriate simultaneity conditions enables the diffusion of the established VC model and related institutions from other populations. In the presence of a market failure, government investors and private fund managers can then cooperate to fill the equity gap, creating the signal necessary for replication of additional VC funds through the functioning of the VC cycle.