Knowledge-intensive Services and urban

Summary. This paper addresses three issues in the context of knowledge-intensive service (KIS) development, related to the competitive base of cities and the degree to which they possess distinctive sources of innovativeness. The rst is, how may growing KIS, or consultancy, use in uence client innovation? Although this is inherently dif cult to demonstrate, the expertise and modes of operation of consultancies suggest that they do in uence technical and organisational change amongst clients. The second issue is the segmentation of consultancy in uence, especially by sector and types of rm. Finally, how far does the urban base of consultancy supply imply local, speci cally urban, bene ts for client innovation? Consultancy services are often delivered over wide areas from their urban bases, within national and international nexuses of corporate and public-sector service exchange. This question cannot be answered by focusing only on local exchange. Urban client–consultancy interaction needs to be set within a national and even an international context of specialist expertise exchange