Geography of Innovation

Geography of innovation is an expression used loosely within the contexts of innovation management and policy research, rather than an analytic concept with a consensual definition. The expression is, however, commonly used as suggested by [Page 217]Apiwat Ratanawaraha and Karen P. Polenske in the sense of showing how innovation may be spatially distributed or concentrated.

The term can be related to both so-called high-tech ventures and low- and medium-tech industrial processes. There may be vastly different rationales and mechanisms at work behind the clustering or dispersal of industries pertaining to different business models and knowledge bases. The economic geographers Bjørn T. Asheim and Meric S. Gertler have noted that a persistent trend toward geographic proximity is at the center of today's globalization processes and that two ...