Constructing Advantage: Distributed Innovation and the Management of Local Economic Growth

Abstract

This paper discusses, in a preliminary way, the new dialogues that successful knowledge‐intensive communities have adopted in order to achieve global business growth. Using empirical data on innovation from cities in Canada and the United States; innovation governance models from small and medium sized countries including Scotland, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden; and using differences in technology sectors—particularly telecom and photonics—this paper will present some modest insights into the path dependencies of small firms, small nations and globally competitive innovations.

Keywords:

• commercialization
• creativity
• economic growth
• innovation
• knowledge‐intensive cities
• public goods

Notes

1. John de la Mothe, Science, Technology and Governance, Continuum, London, 2001, p. 1.

2. Robert D. Putman, ‘Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital’, Journal of Democracy, January 1995, p. 65; this valid line of argument is less successfully amplified in Robert D. Putman, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Touchstone, New York, 2000.

3. Robert D. Putman, Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993.

4. Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, Basic Books, New York, 2002.

5. See John de la Mothe and Gilles Paquet (eds), Local and Regional Systems of Innovation, Kluwer, Boston, 1997; John de la Mothe and Albert N. Link (eds), Networks, Alliances and Partnerships in the Innovation Process, Kluwer, Boston, 2002.

6. Jerry Carlino, ‘The economic role of cities in the twenty‐first century’, Business Review, Q3, 2005, p. 10.

7. John de la Mothe, Innovation Strategies in Interdependent States Essays for Smaller Nations, Regions and Cities, Edward Elgar, London, 2005.

8. Jeremy Rifkin, The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism Where All of Life is a Paid‐For Experience, Tarcher Putman, New York, 2000.

9. Ibid., pp. 19–20.

10. This research and visual example is thanks to Professor Yves Gingras and his team at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

11. This section is based on a report prepared for the OECD in January 2003.

12. See http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletin/00234-00.asp.

13. In the last research assessment exercise, six Scottish departments received the highest ‘5‐star’ rating.

14. This number is imprecise as the Knowledge Exchange also notes as an aside that the electronics industry employs 41,000 people but this figure does not jibe with the otherwise stated figures.

15. Scottish Key Facts compiled by the Knowledge Exchange (Glasgow), 21 November 2002.

16. cf. Richard Nimijean, ‘St. Johns New Brunswick as an emerging local system of innovation’, in de la Mothe and Paquet (eds), op. cit.

17. Spectrum International Benchmarking Study, 1999, cited in A Smart, Successful Scotland (2001).

18. The anti‐thesis of Timothy Leary’s motto, ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’, it would seem.

19. See for example Jean Marie Guehenno, The End of the Nation State, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1995; or Kennichi Ohmae, The Invisible Continent, Harper Business Press, New York, 2000.

20. John de la Mothe (ed.), Science, Technology and Governance, Continuum, London, 2002.

21. See Saskia Sassen, Cities in a World Economy, Pine Forge (Sage), Beverly Hills, 2000.

22. No longer is technology seen as as being equally accessible over time and space, to all ‘rationale actors’ who possess ‘perfect information’. See any of the textbooks on macroeconomics by N. Gregory Mankiew.

23. Politicians have recently referred to Canada as the Northern Tiger, Wales as the Welsh Tiger and Ireland as the Celtic Tiger. Even India is having trouble holding on to its real tigers!

24. Gerhard Mencsh, Stalemate in Technology, Ballinger, New York, 1978.