European Regional Science Association
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European Regional Science Association
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The abstract for paper number 237:
Giovanna Vertova, Department of Economics
University of Bergamo
, Bergamo, Italy
Innovation and Space: A Critical Review of the Literature
Since the publication of Nelson and Winter’s pioneering book, technological change and innovation has been seen as an evolutionary and path-dependent process with countries, firms and industries specificity. Furthermore, in the last decades, the focus on the tacit aspect of technology has emphasised the importance of proximity to enhance and foster learning processes, which enable innovation and technological change. Geographical, cultural, historical, organizational proximity make the transmission and diffusion of information and technological knowledge easier among agents, who ‘speak the same language’. Moreover, many empirical works have shown that innovation and innovative activities tend to cluster together, mainly due to knowledge spillover effects.
The new evolutionary thinking has been matched with regional economics with the aim to search for a ‘new’ model of regional development. The importance of proximity, together with the evolutionary view of innovation and technological change, has given raise to different approaches to regional and local development. All these heterogeneous concepts such as National Innovation Systems, Industrial Districts, Innovative Milieux, Clusters, Learning Regions, etc. share the common view of a the importance of spatial dimension for innovation.
This paper aims to critically review these different approaches in order to make a clear-cut distinction among all. Firstly, each approach uses a different concept of territory, firm and innovation and these concepts have to be clarified in order to distinguish them and to avoid overlaps. Secondly, each approach considers different ways of interactions between the territory and the firms there located, thus giving raise to a different framework of relationships and interlinks. Thirdly, each approach define institutions in different ways, although all approaches remark their importance for local and regional paths of economic growth, and consider the institutional environment and its links with the economic environment in different ways. Finally, each approach gives different suggestions for policy prescriptions, because each of them focuses on certain particular aspect of the innovation-space relationship.
The main conclusion of the paper is that, sometimes, these different approaches define similar thinks in different ways, thus creating a conceptual confusion that must be avoided. Yet, most of the time, they look at different aspects of the innovation-space relationship. The most important thing they have in common is a micro attitude so strong as to forget, too much often, that a region or a territory is always integrated into a macroeconomic system. It is likely that a better understanding of the relationship innovation-space could rise by joining together the micro aspects with the macro ones.
Unfortunately full paper has not been submitted.