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The concept of social innovation has become pervasive among practitioners and academics, though its definition remains elusive. This paper seeks to address this by suggesting a distinction between structural social innovation, which refers to wide social change in scale and scope, targeted versions of social innovation, which can be either radical or complementary to current socio-economic institutions, and instrumental social innovation, when it is used to rebrand previous agendas in a way that is more appealing to stakeholders. These four types of social innovation are discussed referring to practical examples in the literature. We then explore ways in which the concept could be further developed by engaging with the concepts of socio-technical transitions and the foundational economy.

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Over the last fifteen years, we have been observing an increasing fragmentation of economic geography, concerning both schools of thought, perspectives, paradigms, themes and the educational background of researchers. The poly-vocal character of economic geography includes a variety of language areas, a phenomenon so far unknown to a large part of Anglo-American economic geographers. Particularly in the literature about theories, perspectives and paradigms, the non-English speaking world is largely ignored as a basis for debate. Even worse, leading scholars in the field increasingly use the term Anglo-American economic geography to refer to the whole field, although they describe trends and theories in both general and authoritative terms. The aim of this paper is to move beyond Anglo-American economic geography by introducing and reviewing economic geography literature in some other main languages, namely Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. The purpose of doing so is not merely to show that there is more than Anglo-American economic geography, but also to derive from these non-English voices insights in how to move to an integrative paradigm of a truly international economic geography.

In the literature on territorial innovation systems there is a constant tension between the effect of endogenous and exogenous factors and their relative importance. In order to address this tension several approaches have sought to conceptualize the relational and multi-scalar dimension of innovation and to explain how external knowledge and economic flows in conjunction with regional contexts combine to produce regional growth, stagnation or decline. This paper will contribute to this debate, while also highlighting that even at the local level there is substantial heterogeneity between firms. It will also shed light on the role of intermediary organizations that can help address information and power asymmetries between multinational corporations and less competitive local firms. Empirically it will draw on the case study of the Portuguese moulds industry, which has successfully adapted to shifts in the global economy by drawing on local resources while also remaining integrated into global value chains.

Over the past few decades, universities have been asked to become ever more involved in the development of their regions and countries, through knowledge dissemination, contribution to policy debates or even by becoming leaders in stakeholder coalitions. However, as has been often pointed out, for universities to have an impact on regional fortunes it is necessary to have an appropriate innovation ecosystem, which is often lacking in less developed regions. We approach this issue by discussing the three interrelated dimensions of knowledge supply, demand, and translational activities, through two case studies of university–business engagement in Wales. We also distinguish between narrow forms of engagement, based strictly on the commercialisation of knowledge, and contrast them with broader forms of engagement. Finally, we discuss the practical and normative challenges associated with these interactions, such as the danger of appropriation of public resources by private organisations.

Debates on how to address societal challenges have moved to the forefront of academic and policy concerns. Of particular importance is the growing awareness that to deal with issues such as ageing, it will be necessary to implement concerted efforts on technological, social, institutional or political fronts. Drawing on a number of theoretical perspectives-including socio-technical transitions and embedded state theory-the aim of this paper is to identify and understand different approaches to the governance of such system innovations by comparing state responses to assisted living in two contrasting national systems of care, namely that of the UK and Norway. Its findings highlight that state-supported and funded experimentation projects have been instrumental in designing and implementing system innovation: through their emphasis on co-design and co-creation, these projects demonstrated the value of early implementation pilots to explore the 'fit' between novel technologies and prevailing practices and institutional structures in national systems of care. Still, competition, biases or conflicting interests should not be ignored between well-established agents and institutions and experimental solutions whose efficacy remains relatively untested and which involve a combination of new technical, social, organizational and institutional solutions.

Research on university-business links has mostly focused on knowledge exchange and collaboration. This is due to previous case studies of successful regional economies where this type of interaction has been shown to be a catalyst for business growth and continuous innovation (Vallance, 2016). What is sometimes not addressed in this literature is that such interactions tend to be supported by a thick and/or well-connected institutional infrastructure which is difficult to replicate (Trippl, Asheim, & Miorner, 2015). They are, therefore, less likely to function as catalysts for innovation in regions where this is not present. The main contribution of this paper will be to show that the training and supply of human capital is a very relevant, yet relatively neglected, dimension of university-business interactions that can have a positive impact on innovation and growth in less-developed regions (LDRs) (Camagni & Capello, 2013). On an individual level, the acquisition of human capital allows professionals to access knowledge produced in more advanced regions and transfer it to firms located in LDRs (Pill, Bristow, Davies, & Drinkwater, 2011). At the organizational level, this