Regional innovation, R&D and knowledge spillovers: the role played by geographical and non-geographical factors

The chapter reviews the literature on the nature, role and links between R&D, innovation and productivity. The authors examine innovation from the perspective of the resource-based view of the firm, and discuss how non-spatial approaches explain the ways in which the characteristics of knowledge and technological regimes shape the evolution of the firm’s innovative behaviour. The analysis then moves on to set the insights of these non-geographical approaches squarely in the context of economic geography allowing for a discussion on the spatial effects of the prevailing technological regimes on urban and regional economic systems