Faraway, so Close! The Changing Geographies of Regional Innovation

Abstract: Innovation, the act and outcome of making something novel, is unevenly distributed across the geographical landscape. This uneven distribution has a profound impact on the differential success of regional economies. Localized learning between co-located firms and organizations provides an important source of increased innovation for regions to face challenges posed by increasingly global competition. At the same time, it is important for regions to be open and receptive to distant knowledge. This study investigates how local and global knowledge is combined in a productive nexus of learning processes in the context of regional innovation. In particular it looks at how characteristics of the industrial knowledge base shape these geographies of innovation. For this it draws on comparative case studies of regional innovation systems and clusters in a broad range of different sectors ranging from furniture to electronics. The regions that have been analyzed are mainly located in the Nordic countries but also include studies of regions located in Canada and the UK. A considerable part of the empirical analysis has focused on the Medicon Valley biotechnology cluster located in the Swedish-Danish cross-border Öresund region.