'The book by Jorge Niosi, Building National and Regional Innovation Systems is a welcome and timely contribution to the literature. The book is about how to promote science, technology and innovation for development and catching up in developing countries. Niosi presents a clear opinion of how countries should stimulate catching up. . . This book is highly recommendable to students, researchers and policy-makers. It is commendable more for its clearly stated and thought-provoking messages than for its empirical examples. I found that the examples are used more to demonstrate the correctness of Niosi's arguments than to critically investigate their relevance.' - Arne Isaksen, Papers in Regional Science

The innovation systems (IS) approach emerged as a theoretical framework in the industrialized world in the mid-1990s to explain innovation and growth in the developed world. This Handbook is the first attempt to adapt the IS approach to developing countries from a theoretical and empirical viewpoint. The Handbook brings eminent scholars in economics, innovation and development studies together with promising young researchers to review the literature and push theoretical boundaries. They critically review the IS approach and its adequacy for developing countries, discuss the relationship between IS and development, and address the question of how it should be adapted to the realities of developing nations. Spanning national, sectoral and regional innovation systems across Asia, Latin America and Africa, and written by the world s leading scholars within the field, this comprehensive Handbook will strongly appeal to academics, researchers and students with an interest in innovation and technology in developing countries.

In an era of intense globalization, the critical role of the region as a center for economic development has sometimes been overlooked. Moreover, innovation is increasingly being recognized as being a critical driver of economic growth and development. However, innovation is no longer being seen as a function of research and development; nor is R&D being seen as being sufficient for the creation of technology-intensive industries and the valuable economic spillovers that result in high value-added jobs and exports. Indeed, much more than ever before, it is the combination of factors that contributes to innovation - ranging over skills, finance, production, user-producer linkages, the capacity of organizations to learn, and multilayered government policies - that make local regions the favorites of fortune. Using an evolutionary economic perspective, and drawing on a range of disciplines and accomplished scholars, Local and Regional Systems of Innovation explores important issues at a conceptual, methodological and comparative level concerning how successful locations actually construct their comparative advantage.

The slowdown of growth in Western industrialized nations in the last twenty years, along with the rise of Japan as a major economic and technological power (and enhanced technical sophistication of Taiwan, Korea, and other NICs) has led to what the authors believe to be a "techno-nationalism." This combines a strong belief that technological capabilities of a nation;s firms are a key source of their competitive process, with a belief that these capabilities are in a sense national, and can be built by national action. This book is about these national systems of technical innovation. The heart of the work contains studies of seventeen countries--from large market-oriented industrialized ones to several smaller high income ones, including a number of newly industrialized states as well. Clearly written, this work highlights institutions and mechanisms which support technical innovation, showing similarities, differences, and their sources across nations, making this work accessible to students as well as the scholars of innovation.

This volume provides a novel way of examining innovation in sectors by proposing the framework of sectoral systems of innovation. It analyses the innovation process, the factors affecting innovation, the changing boundaries and transformation of sectors, and the determinants of the innovation performance of firms and countries in different sectors.

This Handbook is a state-of-the-art analysis of proximity relations, offering insights into its history alongside up-to-date scientific advances and emerging questions. Its broad scope – from industrial and innovation approaches through to society issues of living and working at a distance, territorial development and environmental topics – will ensure an in-depth focus point for researchers in economics as well as geography, organizational studies, planning and sociology.

Most of the policy discussion about stimulating innovation has focused on the federal level. This study focuses on the significant activity at the state level, with the goal of improving the public's understanding of key policy strategies and exemplary practices. Based on a series of workshops and conferences that brought together policymakers along with leaders of industry and academia in a select number of states, the study highlights a rich variety of policy initiatives underway at the state and regional level to foster knowledge based growth and employment. Perhaps what distinguishes this effort at the state level is most of all the high degree of pragmatism. Operating out of necessity, innovation policies at the state level often involve taking advantage of existing resources and recombining them in new ways, forging innovative partnerships among universities, industry and government organizations, growing the skill base, and investing in the infrastructure to develop new technologies and new industries. Many of these initiatives are being guided by leaders from the private sector and universities. The objective of Best Practices in State and Regional Innovation Initiatives: Competing in the 21st Century is not to do an empirical review of the inputs and outputs of various state programs. Nor is it to evaluate which programs are superior. Indeed, some of the notable successes, such as the Albany nanotechnology cluster, represent a leap of leadership, investment, and sustained commitment that has had remarkable results in an industry that is actively pursued by many countries. The study's goal is to illustrate the approaches taken by a variety of highly diverse states as they confront the increasing challenges of global competition for the industries and jobs of today and tomorrow.