The Cyclic Innovation Model: A New Challenge for a Regional Approach to Innovation Systems?

Innovation processes have changed significantly in the last four decades. Organizations no longer innovate on their own, aware that they need to decentralize their innovation activities and have to cooperate closely with other organizations in innovation systems. In this paper we discuss the spatial consequences of these developments, introducing the Cyclic Innovation Model (CIM) as a framework to analyse system innovation and applying it to the case of Thixomoulding, i.e. the development and exploitation of a revolutionary new material in the region of Flevoland, a province of the Netherlands.