Boschma R. A. (2005) Proximity and innovation: a critical assessment, Regional Studies39, 61-74. A key issue in economic geography is to determine the impact of geographical proximity on interactive learning and innovation. We argue that the importance of geographical proximity cannot be assessed in isolation, but should always be examined in relation to other dimensions of proximity that may provide alternative solutions to the problem of coordination. We claim that geographical proximity per se is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for learning to take place. Nevertheless, it facilitates interactive learning, most likely by strengthening the other dimensions of proximity. However, proximity may also have negative impacts on innovation due to the problem of lock-in. Accordingly, not only too little, but also too much proximity may be detrimental to interactive learning and innovation. This may be the case for all five dimensions of proximity discussed in the paper, i.e. cognitive, organizatio...

Proximity and Innovation: A Critical Assessment

Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

This handbook looks to provide academics and students with a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the phenomenon of innovation. Innovation spans a number of fields within the social sciences and humanities: Management, Economics, Geography, Sociology, Politics, Psychology, and History. Consequently, the rapidly increasing body of literature on innovation is characterized by a multitude of perspectives based on, or cutting across, existing disciplines and specializations. Scholars of innovation can come from such diverse starting points that much of this literature can be missed, and so constructive dialogues missed. The editors of The Oxford Handbook of Innovation have carefully selected and designed twenty-one contributions from leading academic experts within their particular field, each focusing on a specific aspect of innovation. These have been organized into four main sections, the first of which looks at the creation of innovations, with particular focus on firms and networks. Section Two provides an account of the wider systematic setting influencing innovation and the role of institutions and organizations in this context. Section Three explores some of the diversity in the working of innovation over time and across different sectors of the economy, and Section Four focuses on the consequences of innovation with respect to economic growth, international competitiveness, and employment. An introductory overview, concluding remarks, and guide to further reading for each chapter, make this handbook a key introduction and vital reference work for researchers, academics, and advanced students of innovation. Contributors to this volume - Jan Fagerberg, University of Oslo William Lazonick, INSEAD Walter W. Powell, Stanford University Keith Pavitt, SPRU Alice Lam, Brunel University Keith Smith, INTECH Charles Edquist, Linkoping David Mowery, University of California, Berkeley Mary O'Sullivan, INSEAD Ove Granstrand, Chalmers Bjorn Asheim, University of Lund Rajneesh Narula, Copenhagen Business School Antonello Zanfei, Urbino Kristine Bruland, University of Oslo Franco Malerba, University of Bocconi Nick Von Tunzelmann, SPRU Ian Miles, University of Manchester Bronwyn Hall, University of California, Berkeley Bart Verspagen , ECIS Francisco Louca, ISEG Manuel M. Godinho, ISEG Richard R. Nelson, Mario Pianta, Urbino Bengt-Ake Lundvall, Aalborg

The Oxford Handbook of Innovation

One size fits all?: Towards a differentiated regional innovation policy approach

Sectoral systems of innovation and production

ABSTRACT The idea to be explored in this contribution is that to understand change as society evolves is useless without Learning that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and may look ‘smart’ but is likely to be unwise. This in turn requires an understanding of why the label ‘knowledge economy’ came into substantial usage by opinion-formers at about the same time. Thus a first wave of injunctions in favour of ‘Learning’ by governments and corporate leaders occurred about 30 years ago. The change in question was led by information technology and the production and consumption practices it entailed. In a second wave of ‘Learning from Leaders’, especially how to be ‘Smart’, the lesson quickly became ‘Learning from Losers’. Here some of the most-vaunted - for example – ‘smart’ visions for various functions nevertheless failed to deliver. Perhaps the greatest failure to learn has been the sight and sound of ‘Flailing by Failing’ from Science Policy ‘led’ governments in response to the SARS2-Covid-19 pandemic when the lessons of at least moderate success involved ‘Learning from Life’ after being prepared by previous experience.

Learning as imitation or mimesis: how ‘smart’ is machine learning for its planning controllers?

Regional Services Innovation

The ‘Dark Triad’ story of widespread entrepreneurial decline and a future recovery discourse

This chapter takes the bankruptcy in 2012 of the leading cluster-building consultancy firm Monitor, founded by academic business guru Michael Porter, as a significant inflection point in the trajectory of clusters as a panacea for local and regional economic development policy. The origins of the â€˜cluster crazeâ€™ are shown to lie in the marketing of a kind of discourse or narrative by Monitor and numerous smaller outfits to the effect that cluster-building was easy because they actually existed and in studying them academics and consultants had found their secret ingredients. For sometimes astonishingly high fees, these secrets would in turn be divulged. Normally missing from such portfolios were social anthropologies of the actual mechanisms by which thriving clusters (or their predecessors, â€˜industrial districtsâ€™) succeeded while others failed. Rather, economists relied on concentration indices, assuming that proximity in econometric space was the main ingredient. In the first main section, the â€˜cluster ideaâ€™ is reviewed and attention drawn to flawed policy practices relying on the â€˜discourseâ€™ approach to cluster-building. This is contrasted with growth performance in clusters that exist materially. The performance of the latter is found to be superior. Next, the undermining of the cluster narrative by critique of the poor definitions, methodologies and actual performance of policy-induced clusters is narrated, illustrated with a particularly severe critique by The Economist. Attention is then re-focused away from the â€˜discursiveâ€™ approach towards the material one, and an analysis is provided of processes of cluster evolution following divergent pathways in search of â€˜platformâ€™ variety. The argument for the demise of cluster-thinking and promotion, but clusteringâ€™s absorption, in reality, into path inter-dependent and diversifying evolution is reiterated in the conclusions. These caution against contemporary and pervasive policy advocacy of specialization-driven economic development of any kind.

‘Eventually even attractive illusions come to an end’: The death of Monitor – and demise of clusters?

It is argued that the emerging spatial organisation of three telecommunications and computer firms can only be fully understood by reference to changing market and competitive contexts, and not by analysis of the forces of production alone. Strategic alliances are seen as an attempt by capital to cope with turbulent market conditions brought about by technical and regulatory change - and are part of a wider corporate and industrial restructuring process that is both attendant upon, and a stimulus to, this changing basis for competition.

Philip Cooke

Papers

Learning as imitation or mimesis: how ‘smart’ is machine learning for its planning controllers?

Regional Services Innovation

The ‘Dark Triad’ story of widespread entrepreneurial decline and a future recovery discourse

‘Eventually even attractive illusions come to an end’: The death of Monitor – and demise of clusters?

The geography of international strategic alliances: the cases of cable and wireless, Ericsson and Fujitsu