Building National And Regional Innovation Systems

'The book by Jorge Niosi, Building National and Regional Innovation Systems is a welcome and timely contribution to the literature. The book is about how to promote science, technology and innovation for development and catching up in developing countries. Niosi presents a clear opinion of how countries should stimulate catching up. . . This book is highly recommendable to students, researchers and policy-makers. It is commendable more for its clearly stated and thought-provoking messages than for its empirical examples. I found that the examples are used more to demonstrate the correctness of Niosi's arguments than to critically investigate their relevance.' - Arne Isaksen, Papers in Regional Science

The innovation systems (IS) approach emerged as a theoretical framework in the industrialized world in the mid-1990s to explain innovation and growth in the developed world. This Handbook is the first attempt to adapt the IS approach to developing countries from a theoretical and empirical viewpoint. The Handbook brings eminent scholars in economics, innovation and development studies together with promising young researchers to review the literature and push theoretical boundaries. They critically review the IS approach and its adequacy for developing countries, discuss the relationship between IS and development, and address the question of how it should be adapted to the realities of developing nations. Spanning national, sectoral and regional innovation systems across Asia, Latin America and Africa, and written by the world s leading scholars within the field, this comprehensive Handbook will strongly appeal to academics, researchers and students with an interest in innovation and technology in developing countries.

Innovation is increasingly recognised as the key to successful competition in the global knowledge-based economy. In Knowledge, Clusters and Regional Innovation the authors illuminate the highly differentiated nature of the innovation systems found across the country and demonstrate that innovation can occur in a wide range of sectors and clusters, ranging from multimedia and biotechnology in large metropolitan areas to more traditional sectors such as wood products in rural settings.Written by members of the Innovation Systems Research Network (ISRN), a cross-national network of regionally oriented researchers from a wide range of disciplines, Knowledge, Clusters and Regional Innovation provides important insights into the varied nature of innovation in the Canadian economy. The members of the network have recently launched a major study of cluster development across Canada that promises to provide scholars and policymakers with continuing insights into the nature economic development in Canada.Contributors include Neil Bradford (Huron University College), Shauna Brail (Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, Ontario), John N.H. Britton (University of Toronto), Michael Gurstein (Technical University of British Columbia), J. Adam Holbrook, Cooper H. Langford (University of Calgary), Lisa Mills (Brown University), Jorge Niosi (Université du Québec à Montréal), Pierre Therrien (Marketplace Innovation Directorate, Industry Canada), Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay (Université du Québec), and David A. Wolfe.

Describes how institutions and markets can best be structured in order to promote innovation in key economic sectors.

First Published in 1999. The process of globalization is shaped and reinforced by a rapidly changing knowledge environment. As economies become less constrained national frontiers they become more geographically specialized. Thus, important elements of the innovation process tend to become regional rather than national. In this new environment, large corporations are weakening their links with their home country, spreading their innovation activities to source different regional systems of innovation. Regional networks of forms are creating new forms of learning and production. The aim of this book is to broaden, both conceptually and empirically, the 'national systems of innovation' approach, developed by Lundvall, Freeman, Nelson and others. While recognizing the creative nature of economic adjustment in a turbulent world and the highly uneven distribution of economic growth, the national systems approach lacks a mechanism by which to understand innovation when realistic unit of analysis is no longer the nation state. Written by leading scholars in the field, this book provides a ground-breaking examination of sub-regional systems of innovation in an interconnected global economy.

Concerns over Canada's ability to compete in the global economy persist despite its relatively improved economic performance in recent years. The key to success in this global economy lies in our capacity to innovate - the ability to develop new, or significantly improved, services, products, production techniques, or management methods - and the capacity to sustain those innovations. The challenge of competing in a global, knowledge-based economy accentuates our need to understand how the innovation process operates in the context of Canada's diverse regional economies. Attempts to understand the nature of the innovation process, and to develop policy to support it, which are exclusively at the national level may founder on this problem of diversity. Policy and analysis in Canada, based on an innovation systems approach, must take into account the economic and social differences among the regions. infrastructure, a factor that strongly influences the innovative potential of regions across the country. Finally, case studies focusing on Quebec and British Columbia provide a detailed picture of the strengths and gaps of individual regional innovation systems. Written by members of the Innovation Systems Research Network (ISRN), a cross-national network of regionally oriented researchers, Innovation, Institutions and Territory provides useful insights for scholars and for policymakers at the federal, provincial, and subregional levels. Contributors include Frederic Allaert (Minolta, France), Tomas G. Bas, Robert Dalpe (Montreal), Sophie D'Amours (Laval), Jerome Doutriaux (Ottawa), Adam Holbrook, Lindsay Hughes, Marie-Pierre Ippersiel (CIRST), Rejean Landry (Laval), Candace Morrison, Richard Nimijean (RQSI and PRIME), Jorge Niosi (UQAM), Tim Padmore (UBC), Diane Poulin (Laval), David Rolland (UQAM), Udo Staber (New Brunswick), Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay (UQAM), and David A. Wolfe.

This study defines the aims and tools of a new innovation policy and identifies examples of good policy practice recently implemented in OECD countries.

Policies to stimulate innovation at national and local levels must both build on and contribute to the dynamics of innovative clusters. This book presents a series of papers written by policy makers and academic experts in the field, that demonstrate why and how this can be done.