1092 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Chapter 6.3 1. INTRODUCTION Supply chain management (SCM) has been used as an equipment to describe the whole product chain from the raw materials to the end users (Iskanius 2006; Scarlett, 2007). Often this supply chain consists of several different producers and intermediaries. It is usual to describe and study geographical economic areas, specialised one or several neighbouring branches, using e.g. cluster of diamond model (Porter, 1990) and resource dependence theory (Männistö, 2002). Instead of these models or theories, we will consider here Rauno Rusko University of Lapland, Finland Supply Chain Management in the Context of Economic Area: Case Study for the Development of ICT Branch in the City of Oulu ABSTRACT This study introduces geographical viewpoints for supply chain management (SCM) focusing on the branch of information communication technology (ICT) in the case of city and region of Oulu. The City of Oulu is a remarkable planning and administration centre of ICT branch in Finland. In this study we - instead of using commonly used cluster or resource dependence theories - utilize SCM framework to describe the development and path-dependence of knowledge-intensive geographical area, which is spe- cialized in high tech or actually ICT business. In the context of geographical analysis, or of geographical economics, SCM is less-used viewpoint. This case study shows that SCM, and especially strategic level SC endowment viewpoint (introduced initially in Rusko, Kylänen & Saari, 2009), is valuable and useful tool in analysing the geo-economic development and path-dependence of a high tech centre. As a result, we notice that the development of Oulu is based on the development of SC endowment connected with amounts of talents and also multi-dimensional coopetition. One essential result is the observed erosion in the SC endowment of high tech Oulu, which sets remarkable challenges for city planning. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0882-5.ch6.3