Innovation Spaces In Asia

Innovation Spaces in Asia provides insight into how and why Asia is poised to impact global innovation. Asia is undergoing rapid developments in markets, sources of technology and user preferences. A key characteristic of the book is the rich empirical

This book offers fresh impulses from different industries on how to deal with innovation processes. Authors from different backgrounds, such as artificial intelligence, mechanical engineering, medical technology and law, share their experiences with enabling and managing innovation. The ability of companies to innovate functions as a benchmark to attract investors long-term. While each company has different preconditions and environments to adapt to, the authors give guidance in the fields of digitalization, workspaces and business model innovation.

The expansion of knowledge economy, globalization, and economic competitiveness has imparted importance of knowledge and innovation in local economies worldwide. As a result, integrating knowledge generation and innovation considerations in urban planning and development processes has become an important agenda for establishing sustainable growth and long-term competitiveness of contemporary cities. Today, making space and place that concentrate on knowledge generation and innovation is a priority for many cities across the globe. Urban knowledge and innovation spaces are integrated centres of knowledge generation, learning, commercialization and lifestyle. In other words, they are high-growth knowledge industry and worker clusters, and distinguish the functional activity in an area, where agglomeration of knowledge and technological activities has positive externalities for the rest of the city as well as firms located there. Urban knowledge and innovation spaces are generally established with two primary objectives in mind: to be a seedbed for knowledge and technology and to play an incubator role nurturing the development and growth of new, small, high-technology firms; and to act as a catalyst for regional economic development that promotes economic growth and contributes to the development of the city as a ‘knowledge or innovative city’. This book contains chapters reporting investigation findings on different aspects of urban knowledge and innovation spaces, such as urban planning and design, innovation systems, urban knowledge management, and regional science. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Urban Technology.

This book promotes the creation of advanced knowledge-based economies driven by innovation networks and the continuous development of human capital and capability. It provides valuable insights into the growing emergence of knowledge-based industries of the Asia Pacific, and highlights research on: modes of creativity and innovation; intellectual property; the components of national innovation systems such as firms, education and training; knowledge and technical infrastructure; and public policy. The Asia Pacific region is currently in the process of transforming from being the manufacturing centre of the global economy to a centre of innovation for the knowledge economy, with the successful IPO of Alibaba in 2014 being a prime example of this shift. From a neo-Schumpeterian perspective, the region is increasingly engaged in shortening and intensifying cycles of innovation. The historic agreement at the Beijing APEC meeting between China and the US to radically reduce carbon emissions indicates that one imperative of this innovation is to contribute to sustainability. The fact that the US Government is moving away from this historic commitment, while the Chinese Government is endorsing the commitment, indicates an emerging opportunity for Asia to lead the world technologically in a vital industrial sector of the future.

The East and Southeast Asia region constitutes the world’s most compelling theatre of accelerated globalization and industrial restructuring. Following a spectacular realization of the ‘industrialization paradigm’ and a period of services-led growth, the early twenty-first century economic landscape among leading Asian states now comprises a burgeoning ‘New Economy’ spectrum of the most advanced industrial trajectories, including finance, the knowledge economy and the ‘new cultural economy’. In an agenda-setting volume, New Economic Spaces in Asian Cities draws on stimulating research conducted by a new generation of urban scholars to generate critical analysis and theoretical insights on the New Economy phenomenon within Asia. New industry formation and the transformation of older economic practices constitute instruments of development, as well as signifiers of larger processes of change, expressed in the reproduction of space in the city. Asia’s major cities become the key staging areas for the New Economy, driven by the growing wealth of an urban middle and professional class, higher education institutions, city-based inter-regional movements and urban mega-projects. New Economic Spaces in Asian Cites animates this New Economy discourse by means of vibrant storylines of instructive cities and sites, including cases studies situated in cities such as Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Singapore. Theoretical and normative issues associated with the emergence of the new cultural economy are the subject of the book’s context-setting chapters, and each case study presents an evocative narrative of development interdependencies and exemplary outcomes on the ground. New Economic Spaces in Asian Cities offers a vivid contribution to our understanding of the ongoing transformation of Asia’s urban system, including the critical intersections of global and local-regional dynamics in processes of new industry formation and the relayering of space in the Asian metropolis. The synthesis of empirical profiles, normative insights, and theoretical reference points enhances the book’s interest for scholars and students in fields of Asian studies, urban and cultural studies, and urban and economic geography, as well as for policy specialists and urban/community planners.

The central concept of this volume, "knowledge networks," refers to interactive linkages around nodes of tacit and codified knowledge embedded in Global Value Chains. Such networks can be distinguished by the process or format of information exchange, the organization of the networks within firms, and by target market or product.

This book offers a detailed account of a range of mHealth initiatives across South, Southeast and East Asia. It provides readers with deep insights into the challenges such initiatives face on the ground, and a view of the diverse cultural contexts shaping strategies for overcoming these challenges. The book brings together various discussions on the broader mHealth literature, and demonstrates how a research focus on diverse Asian contexts influences the success and/or failure of current mHealth initiatives. It also highlights the important roles social scientists can play in advancing theoretical approaches, as well as planning, implementing and evaluating mHealth initiatives. The book is a valuable resource for project planners, policy developers in NGOs and government institutions, as well as academics, researchers and students in the fields of public health, communications and development studies. This book is open access under a CC BY license