Tied In The Global Network Of Local Innovation

In this paper we exploit a unique and rich dataset of patent applications and scientific publications in order to answer several questions concerned with two current phenomena on the way knowledge is produced and shared worldwide: its geographical spread at the international level and its spatial concentration in few worldwide geographical hotspots. We find that the production of patents and scientific publications has spread geographically to several countries, and has not kept within the traditional knowledge producing economies (Western Europe, Japan and the U.S.). We observe that part of this partial geographical spread of knowledge activities is due to the setting up of Global Innovation Networks, first toward more traditional innovative countries, and then towards emerging economies too. Yet, despite the increasing worldwide spread of knowledge production, we do not see the same spreading process within countries, and even we see some increased concentration in some of them. This may have, of course, important distributional consequences within countries. Moreover, these selected areas also concentrate a large and increasing connectivity, within their own country to other hotspots, and across countries through Global Innovation Networks.

Where exactly is innovation taking place? Relying on millions of patent and scientific publication records, the World Intellectual Property Report 2019 documents how the geography of innovation has evolved over the past few decades.

This report presents an in-depth study of the innovation ecosystem of São Paulo (Brazil). We use georeferenced patent, scientific publication, and economic data to characterize one of the few global innovation hotspots in Latin America and the southern hemisphere. It attempts to understand what makes São Paulo different from the rest of Brazil and the Latin American region by mapping what its main potentialities and drawbacks are. The report finds that São Paulo is rich in scientific activity, but lags behind with respect to patent production. At the same time, it is a patent leader in Brazil and the region with characteristics resembling the large innovation hotspots of the world. The report also shows where São Paulo is in the global knowledge space, and how it can leverage scientific production and global networks to upgrade into more complex technological activities. The report also reviews the main innovation policies at national and subnational level, which may partially explain the São Paulo’s success story.

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.

Over the last three decades cross-border innovation has profoundly changed. The fragmentation of global value chains, increased global connectedness, and pervasive digitalization have helped shape innovation processes that now increasingly span national borders. This changing process has involved a wide array of actors (players) in a variety of geographical locations and organizational spaces (places), calling for new guidelines, public interventions, and regulatory frameworks (policies). Considering this complexity, the existing literature has only partially captured the ongoing changes in cross-border innovation and showed a limited engagement in integrative, cross-disciplinary debate. This book presents complementary and novel perspectives on the phenomenon from distinguished scholars, bridging perspectives from a rich set of research streams including international business, strategy, innovation studies and policy, international economics, industrial organization, economic geography, ethics, and sustainability. Three distinct sections focus on the players, the places, and the policies in contemporary cross-border innovation. Together, the contributions highlight the changing role of multinational enterprises and the growing participation of emerging actors in cross-border innovation, via formal and informal networks which are increasingly shaped around highly mobile individuals and new geographical centres. The book also emphasizes the intertwined role of policies at national and international level, stressing the importance of supply- and demand-oriented policies and presenting intellectual property right policies as a double-edged sword for cross-border innovation.

In Economics, networks are increasingly used to describe the many links created between independent companies, as well as between them and other institutions (universities, banks, venture capital, etc.). In the current global and knowledge-based economy, they can be characterised as knowledge factories and knowledge boosters. They feed the internal processes of innovation (collaborative innovation) or the external processes of innovation, created by the propagation effects that come from inter-firm collaboration. The book explains how innovation networks are at the origin of the production of new knowledge that will be transformed and used in common as well as in separated production processes. This characteristic of networks as knowledge factories gives incentives to further investment in the production of knowledge and ensures the cumulativeness of the innovation process. Some of the authors clearly take a territorial point of view and study how clusters (in different parts of the world: Europe, Eastern Asia and North America) propelled by the quality of the innovation networks they enclose, can be characterised as knowledge pools into which the local actors will be able to draw to reinforce their individual and collective competitiveness. This book also includes analyses of the quality of the networks built within clusters, which may help their identification.

Delivering a global perspective, Clusters in Times of Uncertainty follows the transformation of clusters in a world defined by digital collaboration and green economies. In this innovative book, contributors deconstruct and compare examples from Japan and Europe to explore the opportunities and challenges that clusters present in our modern age.

Presenting essential research on contemporary foreign direct investment policies, this Handbook identifies the wide variety of global policy challenges linked to modern technological, geostrategic and entrepreneurial developments, from electoral uncertainties to rapid digitalization.