In economics, business, and government policy, innovation policy requires the creation of new approaches based on insight in what happens in innovation processes, on the micro level of people, firms and interaction between them. In innovation policy it should also be recognized that innovation entails a whole range of activities beyond R&D, such as entrepreneurship, design, commercialization, organization, collaboration and the diffusion of knowledge and innovations . This edited volume explores the roles of individuals and organizations involved in the creation and application of innovations. Covering topics as diverse as the macro-economic importance of innovation, theories of knowledge and learning, entrepreneurship, education and research, organizational innovation, networks and regional innovation systems, Micro-Foundations for Innovation Policy provides critical insights into the development of innovation policy.
The notion of microfoundations has received growing interest in neo-institutional theory along with an interest in microfoundational research in disciplines such as strategic management and economics.
The triple helix of university–industry–government interactions is a universal model for the development of the knowledge-based society, through innovation and entrepreneurship. It draws from the innovative practice of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with industry and government in inventing a regional renewal strategy in early 20th-century New England. Parallel experiences were identified in “Silicon Valley,” where Stanford University works together with industry and government. Triple helix is identified as the secret of such innovative regions. It may also be found in statist or laissez-faire societies, globally. The triple helix focuses on “innovation in innovation” and the dynamic to foster an innovation ecosystem, through various hybrid organizations, such as technology transfer offices, venture capital firms, incubators, accelerators, and science parks. This second edition develops the practical and policy implications of the triple helix model with case studies exemplifying the meta-theory, including: • how to make an innovative region through the triple helix approach; • balancing development and sustainability by “triple helix twins"; • triple helix matrix to analyze regional innovation globally; and • case studies on the Stanford's StartX accelerator; the Ashland, Oregon Theater Arts Clusters; and Linyi regional innovation in China. The Triple Helix as a universal innovation model can assist students, researchers, managers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers to understand the roles of university, industry, and government in forming and developing “an innovative region,” which has self-renewal and sustainable innovative capacity.
This book showcases over 100 cutting-edge research papers from the 4th International Conference on Research into Design (ICoRD’13) – the largest in India in this area – written by eminent researchers from over 20 countries, on the design process, methods and tools, for supporting global product development (GPD). The special features of the book are the variety of insights into the GPD process, and the host of methods and tools at the cutting edge of all major areas of design research for its support. The main benefit of this book for researchers in engineering design and GPD are access to the latest quality research in this area; for practitioners and educators, it is exposure to an empirically validated suite of methods and tools that can be taught and practiced.
The new Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics: Cities and Geography reviews, synthesizes and extends the key developments in urban and regional economics and their strong connection to other recent developments in modern economics. Of particular interest is the development of the new economic geography and its incorporation along with innovations in industrial organization, endogenous growth, network theory and applied econometrics into urban and regional economics. The chapters cover theoretical developments concerning the forces of agglomeration, the nature of neighborhoods and human capital externalities, the foundations of systems of cities, the development of local political institutions, regional agglomerations and regional growth. Such massive progress in understanding the theory behind urban and regional phenomenon is consistent with on-going progress in the field since the late 1960's. What is unprecedented are the developments on the empirical side: the development of a wide body of knowledge concerning the nature of urban externalities, city size distributions, urban sprawl, urban and regional trade, and regional convergence, as well as a body of knowledge on specific regions of the world—Europe, Asia and North America, both current and historical. The Handbook is a key reference piece for anyone wishing to understand the developments in the field.
Over the last several decades there has been a growing interest in the relationship between entrepreneurship and university-industry collaboration, namely how such cooperation can benefit entrepreneurship development at individual, national, and regional levels. While there are several refereed journal articles on different aspects of university-industry cooperation, most studies dwell primarily on instruments such as spin-offs, incubators and graduate entrepreneurs. This collection offers the first book-length compendium of international comparative perspectives on university-industry cooperation. Entrepreneurship and Knowledge Exchange explores insights from a wide variety of countries of relevance to researchers as well as policy and decision makers, especially those working in developing economies. Seminal contributions from top academics in the field, such as Alan Gibb, Peter Scott, and Mary Walshok, are included. The issues of knowledge transfer, entrepreneurship, and regional/national economic regeneration have inspired countless programs and initiatives at national and regional levels, and the chapters in this book examine these initiatives, providing both a reference work and a record of practical experience.
The book illustrates the considerable advances in modern evolutionary economics and addresses core questions of economic behaviour, interaction of heterogeneous actors in uncertain environments and the possibility of aggregating observations on a macro-economic level. It presents the foundations of economic change as the major building blocks of an economic approach that focusses on complex processes driven by endogenous innovation as well as crisis. The theoretical considerations are complemented by econometric studies to demonstrate the relevance of evolutionary-economic thinking to improve our understanding of the most challenging issues related to economic growth and development.
Very often the process of globalization is referred the word economy evolution. Often we measure and study globalization in the economic relevance. The economy is possibly the most recognized dimension of globalization. That is why we see many new phenomena and processes on economic macro levels and economic sectoral horizons as well as on specific "geography of globalization". The book The Economic Geography of Globalization consists of 13 chapters divided into two sections: Globalization and Macro Process and Globalization and Sectoral Process. The Authors of respective chapters represent the great diversity of disciplines and methodological approaches as well as a variety of academic culture. This book is a valuable contribution and it will certainly be appreciated by a global community of scholars.
Creative industries are a growing and globally important area for both economic vitality and cultural expression of industrialized nations. This volume examines their institutional, categorical and structural dynamics to provide an overview of new trends and emerging issues in scholarship on this topic.
Microsociologists seek to capture social life as it is experienced, and in recent decades no one has championed the microsociological approach more fiercely than Randall Collins. The pieces in this exciting volume offer fresh and original insights into key aspects of Collins’ thought, and of microsociology more generally. The introductory essay by Elliot B. Weininger and Omar Lizardo provides a lucid overview of the key premises this perspective. Ethnographic papers by Randol Contreras, using data from New York, and Philippe Bourgois and Laurie Kain Hart, using data from Philadelphia, examine the social logic of violence in street-level narcotics markets. Both draw on heavily on Collins’ microsociological account of the features of social situations that tend to engender violence. In the second section of the book, a study by Paul DiMaggio, Clark Bernier, Charles Heckscher, and David Mimno tackles the question of whether electronically mediated interaction exhibits the ritualization which, according to Collins, is a common feature of face-to-face encounters. Their results suggest that, at least under certain circumstances, digitally mediated interaction may foster social solidarity in a manner similar to face-to-face interaction. A chapter by Simone Polillo picks up from Collins’ work in the sociology of knowledge, examining multiple ways in which social network structures can engender intellectual creativity. The third section of the book contains papers that critically but sympathetically assess key tenets of microsociology. Jonathan H. Turner argues that the radically microsociological perspective developed by Collins will better serve the social scientific project if it is embedded in a more comprehensive paradigm, one that acknowledges the macro- and meso-levels of social and cultural life. A chapter by David Gibson presents empirical analyses of decisions by state leaders concerning whether or not to use force to deal with internal or external foes, suggesting that Collins’ model of interaction ritual can only partially illuminate the dynamics of these highly consequential political moments. Work by Erika Summers-Effler and Justin Van Ness seeks to systematize and broaden the scope of Collins’ theory of interaction, by including in it encounters that depart from the ritual model in important ways. In a final, reflective chapter, Randall Collins himself highlights the promise and future of microsociology. Clearly written, these pieces offer cutting-edge thinking on some of the crucial theoretical and empirical issues in sociology today.
