Neighbourhood System of Innovation: South Africa as a regional pole for economic development in Africa

Introduction The innovation systems literature has provided a useful framework to analyse the linkages of firms and other organisations with both domestic and foreign actors. Although the concept of innovation systems was originally developed at the national level (Freeman, 1982; Nelson & Winter, 1982; Lundvall, 1985; Nelson, 1988, etc), the literature has expanded rapidly over the years. Since its origins innovation systems have been defined at different levels. National, regional, local, sectoral and technological systems of innovation now constituted alternative units of analysis to better understand the processes of creation, diffusion and use of knowledge. These different views, rather than conflicting, tend to complement each other and depend on the attributed boundaries to the system subject of analysis. This paper proposes that the reciprocal interaction between regional economic poles within the developing regions can be studied by employing systems of innovation perspective. The application of the systems of innovation perspective serves as a window to explore the quality of interactions in economic, education, productive activities and institutions. The importance of the regional dimension in stimulating the innovation capability and competitiveness of firms and regions has been examined by many authors (Asheim et al., 2003: Cooke, 2003, Wolfe, 2003, Isaksen, 2002, Malmberg and Maskell, 2002). The regional dimension is acquiring more relevance as the interactions between actors within the region become more intense. In the context of Africa, for example, the emergence of South Africa as an economic outlier in the region has created new challenges both opportunities and dangers for the rest of Africa. This paper suggests that a systems‟ of innovation perspective might be useful to examine how South Africa, as a regional pole in Africa, interacts with the region by sharing knowledge, learning and capacity building