Geography of Innovation

The theme of innovation (understood as the introduction of new products, processes, or organizational forms in the marketplace) is interdisciplinary in nature. Economic geographers started participating in the field early, but scholars from fields such as economics and innovation studies have also contributed to understanding the geography of innovation. Core topics have been to examine how innovativeness of actors is influenced by the geographical context and by relations to actors at different spatial scales. Thus, while many studies of the geography of innovation have focused on local and regional scales, there is now an extensive literature that takes a national, global, or multi-scalar perspective. An additional development has been an expansion of the object of study from mainly science-based innovations to experienced-based innovations. This is currently expanding even further into issues such as social innovation