Innovation is regarded as a highly open and interactive process, where companies absorb, generate and apply knowledge relying both on internal and external sources. They maintain links to various knowledge sources from local to global levels using particular channels for acquiring such...

Knowledge has become a key source of competitiveness for advanced regions and nations, indicating a transformation of capitalism towards a “knowledge economy”. Knowledge intensive sectors in production and in services have a lead in this respect, they can be considered as role models for the...

The concept of open innovation, building upon ideas of “interactive innovation” and “innovation networking” has gained interest more recently. It argues that companies should increasingly also rely on ideas and knowledge developed externally, and create external paths for innovation....

In knowledge-based sectors such as ICT innovation is seen to be as a key factor for the competitiveness of firms. Nowadays, the innovation process is regarded to be highly interactive, so companies tend to rely on both internal and external knowledge. There are arguments that the character of...

In recent years new firm formation has become a major area of both research and policy. Yet, while regional differences in business start-up intensity, and their causes, have been the subject of various studies, few attempts have been made to investigate spatial variation in the structural...

Today, economic growth is widely understood to be conditioned by productivity increases which are, in turn, profoundly affected by innovation. This volume explores these key relationships between innovation and growth, bringing together experts from both fields to compile a unique Handbook.

The expert contributors illustrate that sources of regional competitiveness are strongly linked with spatially observable yet increasingly flexible realities, and include building advanced and efficient transport, communications and energy networks, changing urban and rural landscapes, and...