Open innovation and its discontents

This paper critically synthesizes empirics and issues in discrete inter-disciplinary literatures to identify ‘open innovation’ as part of an emergent regime of accumulation, overlaying and co-existing with flexible production, and encompassing novel firm-level strategies, new forms of corporate networks, and a disturbing capital-labor relation that informalizes innovative work while cultivating entrepreneurial but self-exploiting subjects. I explain the novelty of open innovation, its genealogy, and the implications for people and conditions of work as much as for firms in a new topology of power relations. I cast the ensemble of strategies and tactics encompassed in open innovation as contingent, continually unfolding, and sometimes chaotic if not destructive for both firms and labor, in contrast to the celebratory tone in the business as well as geography and regional studies literatures regarding its benefits for competitiveness, innovativeness, value capture, and development. Open innovation – the externalization of innovation – entails long-run approaches to innovation and investment that are fraught with problems, prompting the development of short-term tactics to engage the challenges. One short-run strategy, crowdsourcing, bypasses the conventional web of inter-firm relations to connect digitally with individuals of the global crowd, enabling firms to reap the benefits of the crowd’s innovative talents, often without remuneration under circumstances that institutionalize informal work. These neoliberal subjects are best understood in terms of multiple subjectivities. I close by connecting the crowdsourcing of innovative with non-innovative work, both of which are parts of the emergent regime associated with new hiring and work practices that usher in new modes of exploitation.     

Ecological entrepreneurship: sustainable development in local communities through quality food production and local branding

The paper explores the importance of specialised networks in shaping local/regional responses to the deepening crisis of conventional agriculture in the EU, as well as potentially creating a more sustainable platform for rural development. The emphasis will be on the problem-solving aspects of network creation and maintenance within a broader and not necessarily supportive competitive and regulatory environment. This involves examining, both over time and space, how networks function to shape knowledge and create a competitive willingness to innovate to achieve mutually beneficial goals. Through a process which we call ecological entrepreneurship, key actors facilitate sustainable development in the countryside by a combination of fragmentation, specialisation and quality building strategies. We empirically explore these evolutionary and spatial factors through two farming-centred networks—an organic farming network in the UK: the Graig Farm Producer Group; and a regional quality brand in the Netherlands: the Waddengroup Foundation.The analysis of these two networks is used to examine in-depth the significance and construction of the social and spatial milieu for providing the individual and collective capabilities to establish viable problem-solving responses. This raises questions of: (i) how such networks are and can be sustained over time; (ii) the extent to which there are common evolutionary pathways which reproduce and embed problem-solving network building; (iii) how different spatial relations are engendered and (iv) whether such ‘local’ projects can advance to wider counter-movements in the context of the prevailing political economy.     

Kenya’s Secondary Cities Growth Strategy at a Crossroads: Which Way Forward?

Kenya has been promoting equitable urban and regional development since the 1970s despite the lack of a clearly formulated national urban policy or an urban and regional development policy. A key element of the country’s equitable urban and regional development effort is the promotion of secondary cities that would relieve population pressure in the countryside, help to better integrate the country’s rural and urban economies, help to reduce congestion and improve the quality of life in the metropolitan cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, and help increase the modernization spin-off which urban centers provide to the surrounding rural areas. Using recent census and economic survey data, this paper examines the current state of Kenya’s secondary cities in the context of its urban and regional development strategies. The paper finds that: (1) the country’s urban and regional development strategies have failed to work as planned largely because of insufficient devolution of power and fiscal responsibility to municipal and other local government units, (2) the country’s secondary cities are faced with immense challenges that undermine their ability to live up to expectations, (3) some of these cities have significantly grown economically over the last four decades despite immense challenges, and (4) Nairobi’s dominance of Kenya’s economy continues because of policies that unwittingly concentrate investments there. The paper concludes with strategies that could enhance the country’s urban and regional development programs and, in the process, aid the development of its secondary cities.     

Kenya’s Secondary Cities Growth Strategy at a Crossroads: Which Way Forward?

Kenya has been promoting equitable urban and regional development since the 1970s despite the lack of a clearly formulated national urban policy or an urban and regional development policy. A key element of the country’s equitable urban and regional development effort is the promotion of secondary cities that would relieve population pressure in the countryside, help to better integrate the country’s rural and urban economies, help to reduce congestion and improve the quality of life in the metropolitan cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, and help increase the modernization spin-off which urban centers provide to the surrounding rural areas. Using recent census and economic survey data, this paper examines the current state of Kenya’s secondary cities in the context of its urban and regional development strategies. The paper finds that: (1) the country’s urban and regional development strategies have failed to work as planned largely because of insufficient devolution of power and fiscal responsibility to municipal and other local government units, (2) the country’s secondary cities are faced with immense challenges that undermine their ability to live up to expectations, (3) some of these cities have significantly grown economically over the last four decades despite immense challenges, and (4) Nairobi’s dominance of Kenya’s economy continues because of policies that unwittingly concentrate investments there. The paper concludes with strategies that could enhance the country’s urban and regional development programs and, in the process, aid the development of its secondary cities.     

Networking for Local Agenda 21 implementation: Learning from experiences with Udaltalde and Udalsarea in the Basque autonomous community

Local Agenda 21 (LA21) is widely regarded as a key tool for implementing sustainability policies since local authorities are closer to ordinary people and some local managers and politicians have the ability to adapt organisations to new managerial atmospheres and social demands. However, local governments tend to lack the right economic, human and knowledge resources. Consequently, in the search for local sustainable development, networking and collaborative approaches to LA21 can help local authorities save resources and share knowledge and best practices. Although both research and politicians have tended to focus on LA21, we believe Regional Agenda 21 (RA21) needs to be emphasised as a complementary tool. This paper examines successful innovative practices in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) over a 4-year period, with a view to shedding light on the theoretical literature and to aiding regional and local authorities. Although research on policy networks has produced useful results, we are still some way from a plausible, consensus-based theory of policy networks. Based on experience in the BAC, the present article offers an integrated approach to understanding the antecedents and consequences of a regional knowledge-driven network for LA21 promotion. Although LA21 implementation has been studied before, evidence about networking at regional level is scarce. Other regions in developing countries could use this approach to achieve successful policy networks.     

National territorial planning at the turn of the 21st century

In the early stages of economic development in Korea, national territorial planning was used as a policy tool to guide spatial structure and to provide physical infrastructure for urban and industrial development. Such a top-down approach was inevitable because Korea maintained the centralized political and government system until the early 1990s. Circumstances, however, have changed recently since the 1990s with progress in democratization and localization. In addition, forces of globalization are making significant impacts on the parameters of national territorial planning. Reflecting these changes in both internal and external conditions, the Fourth National Territorial Plan (2000–2020) has adopted a different approach from the past three territorial plans. This paper reviews the socio-economic background that necessitated such changes in approaches to national territorial planning. A major thrust of the Fourth Plan, a focus on emergent or anticipated planning issues in Korea, is discussed. Finally, the paper examines the rationale for long-term strategic planning in the highly fluctuating situation facing Korean society in the new century.     

A thousand years of loneliness? Globalization from the perspective of a city in a European periphery

Most cities face the challenge of increasing global and local change. Much of what has been said about cities in a globalized world has been concerned with large metropolitan cites. It has been postulated that increased competitiveness is the relevant response, and that urban governance has to change from managerialism to entrepeneurialism in order to cope with this challenge. The first part of the paper discusses some aspects of this body of theory, and the relevance for sub-national regional capitals. It also discusses how the scope of strategies depend on changing national and regional policies. The second part uses the case of Trondheim to discuss how these cities perceive and deal with globalization. Four policy options are discussed; the clientist strategy, the competitive strategy, the isolationist strategy and finally the option of doing nothing at all. The article concludes that global challenges will force local government in small cities to forge new strategies, but the preferred option is a clientist strategy rather than an entrepreneurial one, and the scope of strategy is national rather than global. Thus, when dealing with small peripheral cities and globalization, the range of perspectives must be extended beyond entrepreneurialism and competitiveness.     

Determining factors of the development of a national financial center: the case of China

This study explores, theoretically and empirically, one of the important issues of the geography of finance, namely the location of high-level financial services. Specifically, we will try to explain why foreign financial services are spatially concentrated in a particular city so as to form a national financial center in China. By reviewing various forces behind the formation of a financial center, we argue that information problems have created the need for geographic agglomeration of financial activities based on the source of information. This is true even in an era when financial markets work through sophisticated telecommunication networks. Based on a survey of the actual location of multinational corporation (MNC) regional headquarters, and through investigation of reasons for the agglomeration of these headquarters, we anticipate that Beijing, as the prime source of policy information, is more likely than other Chinese cities to be the national pre-eminent financial center when the Chinese financial markets become more open to foreign firms in the near future. This study illustrates, using China as a case study, that geography still provides strong justification of why major financial services continue to have a high degree of spatial agglomeration in particular locations, despite the fact that the electronic transmission of information has substantially reduced the friction of distance.     

Devolution, the governance of regional development and the Trade Union Congress in the North East region of England

The devolution and regionalisation of political and administrative structures following the election of New Labour in 1997 have changed the nature of the state and territorial development and governance in the UK. A regional and sub-national tier has opened up within the existing multi-layered governance system operating at the supra-national, national and local scales. This ‘new institutional space’ is increasingly open to the participation of social institutions--including trade unions--in economic and social governance. Drawing upon empirical analysis of the experience of the Northern Trade Union Congress (NTUC) in the North East region of England, the paper argues that the NTUC--in contrast to its national organisation--is beginning to engage with the emergent institutional structures but its role is inhibited by the centralised strategy and structure of the TUC nationally, its own need for upgrading, capacity building and greater financial resources and the interaction between the North East’s particular legacy of tripartite corporatism and the more pluralist modes of regional development governance emerging in the English regions. Unless such issues are addressed regional trade union centres--such as the NTUC--risk remaining relatively junior partners in the emergent regional governance structures.     

Greening as strategic development in industrial change - Why companies participate in eco-networks

Networking between companies and other regional key actors has grown into a widespread instrument for economic development since the 1990s. Participatory networks have formed the concept for many activities of Local Agenda 21. Simultaneously, economic geography has focused on network theories to explain innovation in and the economic success of regions.This article focuses on the reasons why individual actors participate in environmentally oriented information networks. The questions approached are: Does the concept of learning within networks influence a firm’s development? How do the participants interact with each other? What effects do the networks have on their environment (arenas)?The changing arenas of a firm are analysed with regard to environmental concerns. These changes need to be anticipated for reliable strategies. To gain information and knowledge about current behaviour and activities, the functions of networks as learning platforms are discussed. Drawing upon arguments from different network theories, the motivations of participating in a network are threefold: actor and firm oriented, network internal (inter-firm), and network external. From these, a generic target cube of network motivations and actions is set up.The concept is reviewed by examining 12 ‘regional environmental information-oriented corporation networks’ (RUN) in the Greater Munich Area. The empirical material reveals that this type of network does not provide a guarantee for significant improvements in a firm’s environmental behaviour. However, participants learn about best practices while pursuing explicit or implicit aims as to influence their arenas.     

Is geographical proximity necessary in the innovation networks in the era of global economy?

In the analysis of geographical spillovers, a commonly accepted hypothesis is that the different actors of innovation need to be physically closed to one another because the transfer of tacit knowledge implies frequent face-to-face relations. This hypothesis is put under closer examination in this paper. The first section analyses the need for economic agents to be closely located to develop research and innovative activities, starting with the analysis of their need for co-ordination and using some case studies. Based on the example of three French regions, the second section examines the importance given by the local development policies to geographical proximity in order to support the rapid development of local networks favouring innovation. In both sections, nonlocal relations appear as a key factor to develop innovation. As a conclusion, nonlocal relations should be encouraged by local development policies in the same way as local relations.     

中国科学院固体地球科学知识创新工程现状与发展态势

回顾了中国科学院国家知识创新试点工程实施以来特别是启动阶段3年里固体地球科学知识创新工程试点各项工作的进展情况，包括项目与经费、创新成果、人才吸引、科研竞争力提升、院地合作推进等方面，分析和总结了中国科学院固体地球科学知识创新工程现状，并展望了固体地球科学知识创新工程若干重要发展态势。     

Transnational elites in global cities: British expatriates in Singapore's financial district

Skilled international migration is as an important process of both contemporary globalization and the global city. The establishment of a transnational elite of expatriate labour in international finance plays a vital part in the accumulation of capital within international financial centres (IFCs). Expatriate labour has become a major determinant of the IFC, creating financial capital through complex social relations, knowledge networks, practices and discourses. The principal argument being made in this paper is that expatriates are major agents in the accumulation and transfer of financial knowledge in the IFC, and that such processes are undertaken through expatriate global–local knowledge networks and other social practices. The paper is divided into three major parts. Following a discussion of transnational elites as expatriates in global cities, which also conceptualises their contribution to the spatialization of financial knowledge networks, the empirical study investigates the working, social and cultural knowledge networks and practices of British expatriates in Singapore. Finally, the paper revisits the conceptual work on transnational elites and suggests that expatriates were deeply embedded in global–local relations in the workplace and the business/social sphere through interaction with local ‘western educated/experienced' Singaporeans, but were disembedded from the local in the home and other household social spaces due to the invisibility of the local population in their interactions. Both the theoretical and empirical analyses suggests that expatriates are flow in the Castellian spatial logic of the network society.     

A DEA-based framework for innovation risk management in production systems: case study of innovative activities in industries

This paper provides a framework for evaluation of innovation risk based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. In this framework, the common paradigms of innovation risk are considered as inputs and the various types of innovation are as outputs. These risk paradigms were extracted from valid resources of innovation sector, and a comprehensive classification of innovation types, provided by OECD, was used as outputs category. The relationship between these inputs and outputs is assessed by DEA method based on the CCR model. In this survey, the framework was implemented for innovative activities in various industries, and the results lead us to draw the “Innovation Path” that shows the development direction for each understudy cases. The Innovation Path that is derived from the numerical results shows the numerical goal and useful information about innovation management systems. This path can be used by industrial managers, decision makers and strategists to take the best decision and design the practical strategies to manage the innovation risks.     

Vernacular heritage and evolving environmental policy in Australia: Lessons from the Murray–Darling Outreach Project

The interface between environmentalism and neoliberalism in industrialised nations is dynamic and evolving with each of these significant socio-political movements exerting influence on the other. In the context of Australian environmental policy, ideas of heritage, sense of place and belonging are increasingly invoked to support the current policy emphasis on the role of regional communities for realising goals for land and water conservation and environmental restoration. To explore the broader meaning and consequences of these developments, we focus on the manner in which ideas of heritage are employed and evoked within the Murray–Darling Outreach Project, a collaboration between the Murray–Darling Basin Commission, a key natural resource management agency, and the National Museum of Australia. The Murray–Darling Outreach Project has the aim of increasing community involvement in local environmental issues by promoting ideas of vernacular heritage.     

面向湖南区块的页岩气技术发展路径研究

在比较北美、湖南页岩气资源开发现状及美国页岩气革命的示范意义后,梳理出基于Rothwell模式的面向湖南区块的创新过程模式,认为湖南页岩气开发正处于耦合模式,基于页岩气开发的总规划,急需选择合适的技术发展路径进入整合期,推动下游部门的研发活动和对创新的参与。要实现由耦合模式向整合模式的跨越式发展,技术发展路径为:一是形成完整的商业化运营流程及技术标准整合,渐进式缩小技术储备与产能扩充间的差距;二是大力发展技术服务业和装备制造业,设立页岩气区域储备中心,形成完整的页岩气产业链。     

致力技术创新拓展高端市场是大型勘察单位实现科学发展的必由之路——关于工程勘察与岩土行业发展道路的思考

从市场现状、市场主体、业务区域、业务形态、竞争要素等多个角度分析我国工程勘察行业的现状,并依据行业发展和市场运行等外在因素,指出致力技术创新,拓展高端市场是大型勘察单位可持续发展的必然选择。提出了“培养企业创新氛围,坚持发挥科研先导作用;大力增加技术创新的投入;全力推进‘人才强院战略’,打造人才技术宝库”等打造品牌核心竞争力,实现技术创新和拓展高端市场的有效对接的方式方法。     

Globalisation and regional integration: the case of the Italian urban system

A recent study on the European integration of the Italian urban system shows that globalisation processes do not necessarily separate cities from their regional networks. The most successful cases of recent urban development in Italy are associated with the formation of metropolitan networked regions in which a major metropolitan centre is linked with cities of a lower level by hierarchical, complementary and synergetic relations. The paper examines the result of an analysis carried out on 148 major Italian daily urban systems. It takes into account two sets of indicators: one referring to the supraregional network interactions, measuring the degree of globalisation, and one referring to the proximity interactions inside the regional networks, measuring the degree of regional cohesion. They allow the definition of typologies of urban systems founded on a (normally positive) correlation between supraregional functional openness and regional integration.     

Network configurations and R&D activities of the ICT industry in Suzhou municipality, China

This paper analyzes the network structure and R&D activities of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry in Suzhou municipality, known previously for its local state-directed Sunan model of development. Suzhou, however, has been undergoing dramatic restructuring to remake itself into a globalizing production center. We highlight the significance of the Chinese state and local/regional assets in shaping the trajectories of globalization and regional development, and the increasing importance of domestic markets and regional clusters/agglomeration for foreign ventures. We have found that Suzhou’s development path, heavily dependent on external forces, has made Suzhou a TNC (transnational corporation) satellite district. We also find that the ICT industry in Suzhou has a dual-structure, segmented between foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) and domestic firms. TNCs tend to network among themselves and their interfirm networks are increasingly domestic and regionally embedded in the Yangtze River Delta, while the linkages between TNCs and local firms are weak. We argue that there is a series of technological, structural, spatial, and institutional “mismatches” that limits the establishment of “global pipelines” of knowledge exchange. We hold that the nature of global-local networks is contingent upon regional endogenous capacities and the specific ways in which global capital interacts with local institutions. Therefore, perspectives on TNCs’ local embeddedness must be positioned in their regional/external networks. We also analyze the constraints placed on Suzhou’s development into an innovative city and promote the integration of global and local/regional assets through development of indigenous capacities.     

Strategies for forging and sustaining social movement networks: A case study of provincial food networking organizations in Canada

Social movement organizations (SMOs) play an important role in movement building, however, the particular context and structure of a SMO has a direct impact on its ability to foster and sustain collaboration. In this paper I investigate the unique positioning of provincial networking organizations (PNOs) in Canadian food movements and document their efforts to support alternative food initiatives (AFIs) to interact and act collaboratively for food system change. The research draws on a network survey, over 35 in-depth interviews, site visits, and background information collected in three Canadian provinces to explore the ongoing work necessary for linking together heterogeneous elements without central coordinating mechanisms. I describe the ways that PNOs have established a series of common networking strategies to bring AFIs together across sectors, scales and places: (1) the creation of physical spaces that involve direct contact in particular places; (2) the development of virtual spaces where connections are mediated through digital technologies; and (3) the use of scalar strategies that scale-up local projects to address provincial level policy. I conclude by identifying key areas of contention that arise within the networks, and show that the different structures of the PNOs impact their ability to establish and implement networking strategies. I argue that addressing these challenges must be a preemptive focus in order to sustain networking activity. My contention that contemporary structures of social mobilization require novel strategies and support from networking organizations provides insight for studies of SMOs and movement building more broadly.