Spatial Spillovers Revisited: Innovation, Human Capital and Local Dynamics

Abstract

This symposium focuses on understanding key territorial-level innovation trends and processes by country, region and technology. It questions various widely accepted assumptions, offers fresh perspectives, both conceptually and methodologically, and challenges a paradigm shift in the field of innovation and spatial dynamics. It consists of three articles analysing at different scales (urban, regional and national) the territorial dynamics of innovation and their determinants. The innovation process, with local symbiosis and spatial spillovers at its core, is analysed within the conceptual framework of national and regional innovation systems and regional economic development. Based on a discussion of spatial spillovers and the way they shape the evolutionary and symbiotic relationships between local agents and actors, including university, industry and local development agencies, the symposium highlights the relevance of this framework for a better understanding of the transformation of local economic development processes. It investigates the differences in the geography of innovation regarding different institutional settings, different systems of innovation, and different national innovation strategies. While addressing mainly the EU, the US, and emerging countries such as China and India, the contributions also highlight the critical role of current innovation policies from a general perspective. In so doing, the symposium recognizes a contrarian perspective that argues that contemporary information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide a way to leapfrog the dominant role of proximity in innovation processes, creating a complimentary rather than a substitution effect for more remote and peripheral places. That said, this symposium focuses primarily on an urban network view of the innovation process and proximal effects in this context.

Relationship Between the Built Environment and the Location Choice of High-Tech Firms: Evidence from the Pearl River Delta

“…In the theory of regional innovation system, human capital is conceptualized as one of the basic conditions required for generating innovation, besides local culture and institutions [81]. Our findings are also consistent with the results of a large number of researches focused on human capital [82][83][84][85]. By reviewing the development of Shanghai's biotechnology industry, Zhang found that the accumulation of highly educated talents and Shanghai's talent policy significantly contributed toward promoting the development of the biotechnology industry in Shanghai's Zhangjiang town [86].…”

Summer Farmers, Diversification and Rural Tourism—Challenges and Opportunities in the Wake of the Entrepreneurial Turn in Swedish Policies (1991–2019)

“…Spatial dynamics are important for several reasons. Market characteristics and the possibility of creating a profitable business is dependent on the degree of agglomeration, which also includes the potential success or failure when introducing innovations [56,57].…”

“…Due to the nature of summer farming, we argue that summer farmers are highly influenced by tradition, culture, identity and inherited practices [57] and their activities are both constrained and enabled by biological heritage [26].…”

Transforming the Peri-Urban Fringe in China: The Example of Xi’an-Xianyang

“…Globalization has turned the city region, with its rural hinterland (or the 'city beyond the city' as it has been described [18], from being an 'island of isolation' into what Baycan et al [19] (p. 293) term an 'open network constellation', impacted by global forces, which have reduced self-sufficiency and can negatively impact on environmental and social aspects of sustainability. Yet, local human factors, interacting with global forces, can bring about local innovation contributing to sustainable economic development by assimilating externally generated innovation.…”