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Against the backdrop of the current political developments in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, such as Ukraine, Poland, and Romania, the question arises as to the role played by economic transformation and the resulting innovation linkages in these countries over the last 20 years. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of economic and institutional dimensions on the development of CEE countries, explicitly distinguishing between European Union (EU) members and non‐members, and thus reflecting the differences in institutions and path dependency. Furthermore, the paper contrasts the performance of CEE countries with that of Western European countries. To achieve these objectives, the impact of factors such as innovation, institutions, and political practices on the economic development of 37 European countries from 2000 until 2020 is followed using fixed effects regression and Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The results of the analysis show the importance of institutional factors such as low levels of corruption, political freedoms, and intellectual property. The effect of institutional variables was particularly pronounced in the case of non‐EU countries, which indicates the particular importance of the development of stable institutions for achieving higher levels of economic development for this category of countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the opening decades of the twenty‐first century certain cities around the world emerged as hubs of entrepreneurial innovation. This paper explores this urban economic change phenomenon through in‐depth and comparative qualitative analysis. It focuses on the recent contemporary history of New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Tokyo and Shanghai prior to the global COVID pandemic. Based on an analysis of the drivers, mechanisms and processes of change, it is found that these cities acted as places of possibility for many individuals who previously may have been unlikely to engage in entrepreneurship. The cities were found to have established new development paths through entrepreneurial innovation stemming from co‐creation network dynamics, with key human agents playing pivotal roles. Common elements include the rise of venture capital, the growth of entrepreneurial cultures, and institutional policy changes. Notably, entrepreneurial innovation was found to be closely tied to changes in large corporates. This innovation evolved through the proliferation of new infrastructure such as co‐working spaces and innovation incubators, with each city being utilised as a test‐bed for new ideas. Finally, the emergence of a darker side to entrepreneurial innovation is found in terms of growing urban inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1980s, there has been no explicit regional policy in Canada. Indirectly, though, equalization payments, industrial policies, as well as regional agencies encouraging the adoption of federal industrial and innovation policies, impact regional economies. In 2017, the federal government appeared to alter its approach: the Supercluster initiative was announced, drawing upon the idea that localized networks of interrelated firms can generate innovation and local development. In this paper, we discuss the mechanisms through which spatially focused industrial innovation policy can lead to regional development. We then focus on Canada's Ocean Supercluster initiative. The question we address is as follows: to what extent can this initiative (and, more widely, Canada's Supercluster policy) be understood as a regional development strategy driven by a coherent rationale for regional intervention? Apart from the fact that each Supercluster focuses on a pre‐existing core of firms located within a region, there is little evidence that the Supercluster initiative has regional development objectives or impacts. Key messages: In 2018, Canada's federal government implemented the Supercluster policy. Five regionally focussed clusters were selected for support for business‐led innovation initiatives.Superclusters were presented as a means both to develop regional economies and to enhance Canada's global innovation impact, in a manner similar to Europe's smart specialization.Despite the initial regional dimension, Superclusters are geared towards national, not regional, objectives and do not focus upon regional development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policy scholars have recently focused on the mechanisms accounting for the sustainability of major policy changes. Among the strategies by which policy entrepreneurs may try to avoid future backlash institutionalization is certainly one of the most used. Yet, it can foster ossification and eventually jeopardize policy effectiveness. Such a potential trade‐off between institutionalization and long‐term effectiveness is particularly intense in policies concerning technological innovation because the necessity to create winning coalitions can undermine the required absorption capacity needed by government to engage the innovation ecosystems. This paper explores such a trade‐off with a case study on the Italian policy for public sector's digital transformation. The case is theoretically promising because over three decades institutionalization has always represented the main overall strategy adopted by policymaker, but only the 2016 initiative emerged as a "success." In this sense, the case study can focus on the mechanisms activated by policy entrepreneurs to trigger and entrench change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Motivation: Latin America has witnessed massive increases in production and consumption of chicken meat over the last 60 years and well beyond its share of the developing world's population. Chicken is now a major source of livestock protein in regional diets; leads livestock production in 25 out of the region's 33 countries; production, slaughtering, and sales provide millions of jobs. Purpose: To analyse growth rates for chicken meat in Latin America, why they have differed, how the role of innovation and development policies contributed to bringing about this growth, in turn leading to the patterns of governance of these activities today. Methods and approach: This study used a modified value chain framework along with FAO statistics, national data, published and unpublished studies to analyse macro‐level developments and their linkages to shifts in the organization of activities in the value chain for chicken from pre‐production through to consumption and trade from past to present. Findings Different natural resource endowments, demographics, and dietary preferences combined with frequent innovations and an array of policy measures led to a spectacular surge in output and productivity, lower costs, and facilitated a steady rise in consumption. As part of that growth, these activities became increasingly concentrated in Brazil, Mexico, and Peru and within those countries in a few very large firms. Their operations expanded in the value chain beyond the farm gate, across the region, and in some cases around the world. Policy implications: This paper has implications for greater transparency in grower contracts, better working conditions for slaughterhouse workers and bird catchers, more environmentally and bird‐friendly chicken production, accelerated adoption of practices as per Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems in the value chain for broilers in Latin America and the Caribbean, and improved enforcement of laws and regulations governing the technical and financial operations of value chains for chicken, along with renewed collaboration among government authorities to that effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the determinants of venture capital investments across 25 African countries over the period 2014–2019. In particular, it considers the significance of innovation and digitalization in Africa's venture capital activity. The results show that digital infrastructure, high‐technology exports, internet coverage, market size, minority investor protection and government effectiveness are the main drivers of venture capital deals in Africa over the period examined. More generally, these findings highlight that digital infrastructure and connectivity, innovation and institutional frameworks all play an important role in shaping a favorable environment to attract venture capital funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological innovation is essential to achieve simultaneously economic, environmental and social goals (i.e., the green growth). Indeed, many studies found that environmental innovation spurs overall innovation. However, this topic has not been investigated by taking into account the geographical context. Therefore, our paper seeks to investigate whether 'green regions', with an increased public and private commitment in environmental issues, are related to innovation of local firms. Using data on Spanish manufacturing firms and regions, we find that environmental technologies (especially in green energy), environmental investments, and environmental management at the level of regions are positively associated to local firms' innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the role of regional context on innovation persistency of firms. Using the Community Innovation Survey in Sweden, we have traced firms' innovative behaviour from 2002 to 2012, in terms of four Schumpeterian types of innovation: product, process, organizational, and marketing. Controlling for an extensive set of firm‐level characteristics, we find that certain regional characteristics matter for innovation persistency of firms. In particular, those firms located in regions with: (i) thicker labour market or (ii) higher extent of knowledge spillover exhibit higher probability of being persistent innovators up to 14 percentage points. Such higher persistency is mostly pronounced for product innovators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biocluster initiatives have become an important tool for governments to establish, promote, and strengthen economic collaboration, learning, innovation, and employment within particular regions. However, in addition to issues like competitiveness and employment, bioclusters operate with the additional goal of fostering the transition to a sustainable bioeconomy. The profound changes that are required for a successful shift from a fossil-based economy to a bioeconomy are called transitions and the relatively new scientific field of transition theory has emerged to study them. The aim of this paper is to show the contribution that transition theory can make to the study of bioclusters. In this paper I will review frameworks from the study of sustainability transitions (multi-level perspective and technical innovation systems) and frameworks from theories of evolutionary economic geography and cluster studies (regional and sectoral innovation systems). The review shows how the choice of a particular framework will shape the analysis of the biocluster through the particular focus and delineation associated with each framework. The review shows the advantages and disadvantages these frameworks have for incorporating the various issues related to the shift towards a bioeconomy that are currently neglected in the literature on bioclusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of cities in fostering innovation has for long been taken for granted. Agglomeration and the knowledge spillovers generated in dense urban environments have been considered fundamental drivers of innovation. This view has, however, become challenged by research questioning the returns to physical agglomeration and local networking, placing instead more emphasis on the importance of interregional and international collaboration, and on innovation in peripheral regions. This paper delves into the debate on the role of cities for innovation by examining the interplay between urban location and local collaboration in Norway. It uses data from the Community Innovation Survey for 2006–2010 to map out the geographical dimension of R&D collaboration in Norwegian firms with a view to assessing whether different types of R&D collaboration in urban and rural locations affect firms' propensity to innovate. The results show that local collaboration is associated with increased process and organisational innovation, while it does not produce higher levels of product or marketing innovation. Conversely, international collaboration is connected with higher probabilities of product, new‐to‐market and marketing innovations. Furthermore, location in urban or rural areas makes no difference for most innovation outcomes in Norway when other characteristics are controlled for. Location in cities also does not shape the returns to local R&D collaboration. Hence, the role of cities for innovation in Norway, whether in themselves or as sites for dense local interaction, is less relevant than the urban innovation literature would predict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might historical perspectives assist the goal of improving humanitarian responses? This introduction to a special issue of Disasters on the history of humanitarian action explores this question and outlines how the other submissions to the edition, each with its own approach and focus area from the nineteenth-century to the present today, make different contributions to understanding of humanitarian action. The paper argues that the value of history lies not so much in the information it might offer, but in the challenges it can pose to habitual ways of thinking and in the skills of investigation and interpretation it fosters. These attributes make historical perspectives a potentially valuable addition to the critical questioning of humanitarian practitioners and policymakers. The paper advocates integrating history into a more reflective attitude to change and a more adventurous and holistic approach to innovation, as opposed to simply using it to 'learn lessons'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study challenges existing literature which maintains that technology latecomers usually depend on imported technologies to develop emerging high-tech sectors. This paper argues that the domestic institutional environment in facilitating networking might be more important for developing academia-industry ( A- I) networks. The co-evolution of institutions and the knowledge transfer process in the Taiwanese Biopharmaceutical Innovation System ( TBPIS) is a case in point. Far from relying purely on foreign technologies, several important institutional and policy changes, which transform the institutional environment from prohibiting A- I intertwining into encouraging A- I collaborations, have enabled domestic research institutes to influence the acquisition, creation, and diffusion of knowledge in the innovation network. Nonetheless, the country continues to struggle in commercializing domestic scientific research to step into a knowledge-based economy. Therefore, this paper suggests that more productive strategies would be helpful to advance domestic academic research, sustain A- I networks, and strengthen the innovation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the characteristics of SMEs in less-developed areas in comparison with more advanced economies. The conceptual framework includes different factors making up the so-called 'entrepreneurial quality' of the SME sector: the personal characteristics of the entrepreneurs (motivations and previous experience), different dimensions of the SMEs' entrepreneurial orientation, and the patterns of the SMEs' insertion in national and global value chains. The empirical analysis uses data of SMEs in four different Spanish provinces representing examples of low income economies and comparatively high income ones, respectively. Results show the SMEs in the low income economies to be characterized by a lower entrepreneurial quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to test the way in which geographical proximity and technological relatedness relate to an industry's innovative output. Two mechanisms are therefore tested, namely, urbanization economies and the regional exploitation of technological relatedness. A new dataset is applied, which includes German patent applications from within the period 1995 to 2006. Four industries are considered, two of which are science-based, whereas the remaining two are specialized supplier industries. While diversity is associated with high innovative output in the specialized supplier industries, the same does not hold for science-based industries. However, both kinds of industries seem to benefit from recombinant innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an original framework for the interpretation of innovative activity among European regions according to traditional ‘geographical’ spillovers and ‘relational’ spillovers. The focus is on two knowledge-based relational phenomena: participation in the same research networks (within the EU Fifth Framework Programme) and EPO co-patent applications. Using two econometric techniques, we investigate the factors that determine patenting activity, distinguishing structural features, geographical and relational spillovers. In this way, we are able to test whether hierarchical relationships based on a-spatial networks between geographically distant excellence centres prevail over diffusive patterns based on spatial contiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The San Francisco Bay Area in California is undergoing a technology-driven wave of growth arguably more thoroughgoing than the first 'dot-com' bubble, fueling hypertrophic gentrification and tales of a deeply class-divided, 'Blade Runner kind of society'. While Silicon Valley is still the industry's employment center, San Francisco is seeing faster tech firm growth, and is transforming its downtown to become more 'livable' and promoting public space as key to innovation. In this context, this paper offers a reading of urban public space not just as a consumption amenity but also as the 'shop floor' of a labor process that goes beyond the walls of the firm to mobilize the social itself in the production of privately appropriated value. With innovation now the watchword of gentrification, the stakes of this shift oscillate between the total commodification of urban vitality and the recognition of the social process of value production itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the innovation and development literature, natural resources ( NR) are generally viewed as a curse for developing nations and NR-based industries as having little potential to innovate and drive long-term growth. This has led policy and development experts to opt for strategies to induce a shift in the pattern of specialization towards other sectors. This paper proposes a different approach. By exploring recent evidence from the Argentinean agricultural sector and the mining industry in Chile, it points to the window of opportunity that NR industries offer as a platform to develop knowledge intensive industries with which to support economic development in resource-endowed countries. The lessons drawn from these findings suggest that development strategies can also promote more innovative knowledge intensive NR-based industries rather than moving away from them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the research is to investigate whether the structure of knowledge networks and the variety of the local industrial structure are important for regional innovation and if the interplay between these two forces has an additional effect on local innovativeness. The research analyses co‐patenting collaborations at firm level in the Italian provinces in three five‐year intervals in the period 2001–2016. Results show that the structure of knowledge networks and agglomeration economies of inventors boost local inventive capacity. It also highlights how these forces have an increasing impact on innovation as the variety of the area increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a multistakeholder engagement process conducted in an Australian policy setting that led to a new community engagement framework: Science and Technology Engagement Pathways ( STEP). I describe the process in the context of a lack of awareness, experience, and culture of deliberative public engagement in Australia, particularly in relation to decision making concerning science, technology, and innovation. Increasing cautiousness in government and industry approaches to nanotechnology development, in Australia and elsewhere, creates an imperative and an opening for improved stakeholder and community engagement to improve the legitimacy and sustainability of decisions. In this context, STEP may stimulate movement toward deliberative engagement by raising awareness and commitment from diverse stakeholders and providing a structure for developments in engagement and public dialog. STEP potentially provides 'rules of engagement' and 'intervention pathways' for ongoing public engagement with science and technology developments and for critical 'science in society' perspectives to inform policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) in innovation processes is often understood as that of knowledge intermediaries. Yet KIBS are innovators, and use external services: so what is their nature (or identity) and can it be distinguished from the roles they play? We conceptualize how KIBS can be understood simultaneously as innovators and intermediaries. We survey 407 KIBS innovators, and ask: what characterizes KIBS innovators that use KIBS intermediation? What factors are connected with different aspects of this relationship? Is the relationship conditioned by geographic context? The relationship varies with type of innovation introduced and with user characteristics, but not with geographic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systems architecting is the design phase where the top-level functions and performance of a system are distributed over the system's parts, its environment, and its users. Up till now, system architects had to largely learn the required skills in practice. Some courses exist that teach the right attitude and mindset for the system architect. However, methods for architecting that can be implemented in a computer tool are virtually nonexistent. Earlier we presented a method, FunKey Architecting, which may aid the system architect in the early phase of design. In combination with TRIZ a design tool is created, which can be used to simplify and improve system architectures. It aims at supporting both the system designer and the specialist designers working on systems. The main topic of the paper is the application of the method in two industrial cases. The one case is an environment where new technology has to be developed and state of the art physics have to meet machine construction principles. The other case is in an industry where well-proven technology is used in such a way that high-performance machines are created. A third application of the FunKey tool is performed by students at the University of Twente. The context of each case and the results will be described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A seeming paradox of globalization is that while innovation and the industries and institutions that support it transcend local and national boundaries, high-tech innovative activity continues to agglomerate in a select number of high-capacity regions. Research, however, suggests that innovative regions must—through collaborative activity and related networks—both economize regional capacities while remaining open to global knowledge and finance. Collaboration and network formation are viewed as critical in this regard, as the competitive pressures of globalization are forcing firms to adopt collaborative and open innovation practices: forging relationships with external partners. Two important sources of knowledge and finance are regionally concentrated venture capital firms and large corporations, often globe-straddling multinational enterprises. While collaboration occurs between these two actors, an understanding of the processes and implications has only begun to emerge. Focusing on collaborative venture capital activity in London and the South East, this exploratory paper presents a preliminary understanding as to the role that this particular collaborative activity plays in the pursuit of complementary, extra-regional knowledge and expertise, and the extent to which this collaboration is recharacterizing the shape of regionally based venture capital networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the spatial concentration patterns of innovation in science-based industries in the Netherlands. Using patents as an indicator for innovation we show that science-based industries have a relatively high level of spatial concentration compared to other technologies. In order to understand spatial patterns of innovation, insights into specific spatial and market characteristics of these technologies appears necessary. This is illustrated by the large influence of the Royal Philips Electronics NV on the spatial pattern of innovation in the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses spatial patterns of innovation and partnership in innovation processes in the Netherlands, building on the Netherlands’ part of the Community Innovation Survey, conducted by Statistics Netherlands. Innovation is analysed from a system perspective, addressing both input factors (education levels of human resources and R&D), throughput factors (partnership with regionally, nationally and internationally based partners) and output factors (results in terms of the launching of new products on the market and/or the implementation of new processes in production). Our descriptive analyses at detailed spatial levels (four-digit postal code areas) provide indications that the relation between input factors and results of innovation processes is highly differentiated across regions. Furthermore, international connectivity seems to be strongly connected to the results of innovation processes, whereas the relation between regional clustering and innovative output appears rather weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper follows recent science studies in theorizing information technologies as socio-material configurations, aligned into more and less durable forms. The study of how new technologies emerge shifts, on this view, from a focus on invention to an interest in ongoing practices of assembly, demonstration, and performance. This view is developed in relation to the case of the 'prototype', an exploratory technology designed to effect alignment between the multiple interests and working practices of technology research and development, and sites of technologies-in-use. In so far as it is successful, the prototype works as an exemplary artefact that is at once intelligibly familiar to the actors involved, and recognizably new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking at the olive oil production, the final extraction phase from the paste affects the yield and the quality of the oil more than other processing steps. Several strategies are therefore applied today to increase the process outcome already before extraction at the malaxation stage. Technical innovation is particularly realized in adopting olive oil decanters that enable real-time adjustments of working parameters in function of the different composition of the raw materials, improving the yield of the process and avoiding a significant economic loss for the sector. In the paper of Caponio, Summo, Paradiso and Pasqualone published in this issue of the European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology [1626-1633], the performance of the so-called 'third generation' decanter is presented showing the impact of its application on the chemical, nutritional, olfactory and sensorial quality in the sector of olive oil processing. The significance of the achieved results is underlined in the following commentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate econometrically whether cultural diversity at the workplace boosts innovation. Our longitudinal linked employer-employee data combines two innovation surveys, with Dutch administrative, tax and regional data. We analyse the determinants of a firm's product and process innovations with respect to the firm's internal resources, employee composition and regional agglomeration externalities. We reconfirm the findings of several other recent studies showing a positive partial correlation between innovation and cultural diversity in pooled cross-sectional data; in some cases even when accounting for reverse causation. However, no statistically significant traces of benefit for innovation from cultural diversity remain after introducing firm fixed effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations are using crowdsourcing to capture innovation knowledge from the crowd in the form of ideas and then using the crowd to evaluate those ideas using votes. In this paper, we investigate a crowdsourcing setting in which Canada solicited information from its citizens to develop a digital transformation strategy. Canada used a two‐phase approach. Phase 1 was used to determine which ideas had the largest number of crowd votes, whereas in Phase 2, the crowd voted on the 30 leading vote‐getting ideas to determine the three winning ideas. This research investigates the ability to use information from ideas to estimate the number of votes that the ideas generate. This approach could be used to estimate the number of ideas, before making information available to the crowd. The unstructured text information in the idea is structured by using target concept dictionaries, which are used to estimate the extent to which the dictionary words appear in the ideas (e.g., "globalism") and are related to the number of votes. Using this approach, roughly 1% of the total words are used to explain roughly 60% of the variance in the votes. Further, we also find that the variables associated with Phase 1 votes are not the same variables associated with Phase 2 votes; that is, the decision‐making variables changed. Finally, we find that votes are statistically significantly related to the content in the idea titles and the idea statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An innovation-diffusion model was developed with agent-based modelling ( ABM); the model is used to study technical innovation and its diffusion process in China. The results are as follows: only a small fraction of firms conduct independent product-innovation, and most firms prefer imitation and/or purchases; most of the innovative firms are located in the East; approximately three or four technology generation products can exist in the market simultaneously; preferential policies can speed the process of innovation diffusion and improve economies of less developed areas, especially in Middle China; lastly, preferential policies can also improve the labour attractiveness of the Middle, West and Northeast and reduce emigration to the East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]