Regional Innovation, Knowledge and Global Change

Among the interesting developments of the 20th century has been the economic rise of such nations as Japan and Taiwan and the relative decline of Latin American countries, of the UK, and so on. In order to understand this ebb and flow, economists have begun to appreciate the evolutionary nature of socio-economic change, the important role that technological and research capabilities play in this dynamic, and the apparently paradoxical observation that globalization typically relies on local behaviour. An analytic lens has been developed by Lundvall, Freeman, Nelson and others, called "the national system of innovation". This approach recognizes both the highly creative nature of economic growth and economic adjustment in a turbulent world and the highly uneven or lumpy distribution of growth. This approach leads to an understanding that economic growth is not a "national" phenomenon, but a highly specific reaction to change: hence the rise of Silicon Valley. What is missing in the national systems approach is a mechanism through which to understand innovation when the realistic unit of analysis is no longer the nation state.
In this volume, some of the leading scholars in the field set out to broaden the systems of innovation approach conceptually and empirically, to include both subnational and transnational systems of innovation.