Fostering place-based innovation and internationalization – the new turn in German technology policy

Since the mid-1990s German technology policy has experienced a paradigmatic shift from standard grant schemes towards a region-oriented and competition-based R&D policy. Currently, a new policy experiment, the InterClust contest, is under way, trying to simultaneously foster place-based innovation, R&D internationalization and the internationalization of innovative places. The current paper analyses the new policy, relating it to the recent literatures on heterogeneous firms and on cluster-life cycles, and presents results from a firm survey performed in 21 winner regions of InterClust. Findings show that the new funding scheme takes insights from recent theoretical developments into account and addresses important impediments to firm and cluster internationalization. Although it is too early for an overall assessment, it is argued that the long-term impact will critically depend on the inflow of heterogeneous knowledge and the strength of intra-regional mobilization effects.     

‘Innovation is a dirty word’: contesting innovation in the creative industries

Innovation is a term that is used and defined in many different ways. This holds for innovation in general, but particularly for innovation in the creative industries. In cultural policy and in academic literature, the creative industries are often addressed in the relation to their innovative capacities, yet a shared conceptualisation of innovation in this sector is lacking. This paper seeks to develop a conceptualisation of innovation in the creative industries based on 43 interviews with creative workers about their views and practices. Results indicate that creative workers articulate numerous views on innovation, with three main approaches: innovation as something completely new, innovation as a contribution to society and innovation as a continuous recombination of new and existing elements, with the latter being most prevalent in the creative industries and considered a central (by-product of the) process of creative production that is highly contextual to specific localities and fields.     

A “Theological Junto”: the 1641 Lords’ subcommittee on religious innovation

Abstract

The 1641 Lords’ sub-committee on religious innovation has never been the focus of a dedicated study, despite its acknowledged significance. This article presents the sub-committee as an attempt to control parliamentary discussion of the Church. Its membership was carefully selected to ensure that it would have an anti-Arminian bias. Its discussions addressed a wide range of doctrinal and liturgical questions. The Conformist members of the sub-committee were attempting to re-assert the Reformed identity of the English Church, and roll back the doctrinal and liturgical developments of the 1630s. However, despite the political crisis, they were not prepared to give much ground to Puritan opinion. The sub-committee therefore illustrates the strength of commitment, even amongst leading Reformed theologians, to the idiosyncratic aspects of the English Church Settlement. It is therefore a significant witness to the development of English Conformist opinion.     

Electrical innovation: State initiative or private initiative? Observations on the 1881 Paris exhibition

The characteristics of the 1881 Paris Exhibition would seem to support Mensch's thesis: that it was the result of collective action backed by the State. But in fact, its history leads to quite a different definition of electrical innovation in the 1880's: The Exhibition was the result of an accurate perception of the needs of the existing technological system. It made entrepreneurs accept risk, and was based on an aggressive solicitation of the consumer.     

Assessment of innovation centres—methodological aspects and empirical evidence from Western and Eastern Germany

This study essentially pursues two goals. The first consists in investigating to what extent current methods of assessing the success of technology policies are applicable to the specific instrument of the innovation centre (IC). The deliberations made in this context are of an exploratory nature, since instruments specifically for the purpose of conducting regional economic analyses of the effectiveness of ICs have not yet been fully developed. Secondly, the methodological approach to a comprehensive empirical impact analysis of German ICs is discussed. A survey conducted to this effect by the Department of Economic Geography at the University of Hannover was recently concluded with an encouraging feedback. First results in the form of a comparison of East and West Germany are presented here.     

Proximity and modes of innovation – evidence from two agricultural engineering industries in north-west Germany

Recently, policymakers realized the important role of traditional industries for regional development. However, traditional policies of the last decades mainly focussed on science-intensive high-tech industries. Therefore, it is important to understand, how traditional industries innovate and renew themselves. One of the most notable recent strands of literature distinguishing between the characteristics of high- and low-tech industries is the one on modes of innovation. However, another very important approach related to innovation and regional development, the proximity literature, has only partly discussed in relation to innovation modes. This paper seeks to contribute to this issue by focussing on two traditional agricultural engineering industries from north-western Germany that experienced processes of renewal in the first years of the twenty-first century. It is shown that these industries followed very different developments and utilized different forms of proximities in this process in very specific ways.     

Guerrilla healthcare innovation: creative resilience in Zimbabwe’s chimurenga, 1971–1980

Abstract

Drawing from the last five years of chimurenga, Zimbabwe’s war of self-liberation from the early 1960s to 1980s, this paper shows that the most important aspect of technology and innovation in Africa is not the technology and innovation itself, but the African spirit of creative resilience born of the specificities of struggles its people have endured. By creative resilience is meant a phenomenon whereby, even where death is the outcome, and where the situation is insurmountable, people do not just surrender to fate, but die fighting. As a site of creative resilience, chimurenga is the ultimate site of creative labor and a vast laboratory, not simply a destination for incoming technologies, or a 'user' space but generative of its own insurgent and counter-insurgent innovations. Focusing on the communal war effort involving guerrillas and ordinary Africans in the rear bases of Mozambique and Zambia and on the front inside Zimbabwe, the paper makes its argument through a focus on healthcare innovation.     

Transformation of regional innovation policies: from ‘traditional’ to ‘next generation’ models of incubation

This paper explores a widely employed instrument of regional innovation policy: the innovation incubator. It proposes that incubation approaches are moving away from a ‘traditional’ approach strongly premised on physical infrastructure and high-technology, to a more interactive, participatory and social mode of innovation, in line with broader developments in innovation policy and theory. To practically illustrate this shift, we take two cases: a ‘traditional’ style of incubation in Wales, UK, and a ‘next generation’ incubation programme in Finland. This paper reflects on incubators as a mode of regional innovation policy, both past developments and future trends, to ensure that new policies and programmes learn from best (and indeed, worst) practice and build on, rather than replicate, past approaches.     

A history of failed innovation: continuous cooking and the Soviet pulp industry, 1940s–1960s

Abstract

In the years before and after the Second World War, chemical and related industries in a variety of countries experienced a surge in innovation and development. As a result, the pulp industry became a space for considerable innovation. In Sweden, Johan Richter developed the Kamyr digester, a pulp cooker that could run continuously and was adopted by industry within a decade. Prior to Richter, Soviet engineer Leonid Zherebov designed a similar cooker. But after 25 years of experiments, Zherebov’s design failed, and Soviet factories began to produce pulp using imported Kamyr digesters. This article examines the history of continuous pulp cooking in the Soviet Union as a means to understand the nature of Russian technological innovation and its failures. The paper contends that his effort failed because of the technological system developed by Soviet forestry – a system characterized by a lack of open communication among its main institutional actors and a scarcity of resources to facilitate innovation.     

Making waves: The Royal Navy's management of invention and innovation in steam shipping, 1815–1832 1

Abstract

This paper explores the sources of invention and innovation in steam shipping, the distribution of funding and risk between the state and the private sector, and the Royal Navy's management of innovation, during the experimental period of steam power's adoption at sea. It identifies two intersecting channels through which steam‐related innovations reached the Royal Navy. First, “packages” of innovations were embedded in the marine engines that were commissioned by the Navy from private engine‐making firms. Secondly, the Navy was spontaneously offered a gamut of ideas and inventions, which varied enormously both in potential importance and in degree of development. Although the mechanisms for dealing with these two channels were different, the end result was much the same ‐ in minimizing both the expense and the risk borne by the public sector. It was principally the private sector that was funding scientific and technological development in this sphere. Recognizing its own lack of expertise and consequent hazard, the Navy Board was developing a systematic yet flexible method of assessing steam‐related inventions ‐ which appears to have served it well.     

‘Russian merchant’ legacies in post-Soviet trade with China: Moral economy,economic success and business innovation in Yiwu

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on Russian traders operating in China, particularly in Yiwu, the major commercial hub for the ‘small commodity’ trade, and explores the idea of the ‘Russian merchant’ prevalent in Russia today. Rather than examining the new commercial culture from the perspective of global neoliberalism, it deals with Russia’s pre-Soviet merchant estate (soslovie) and its present-day political-ideological evocations. While there is no direct cultural-professional continuity between pre-Soviet and post-Soviet merchants, some similarities have come to the fore and have been encouraged by the state and the Church. This is due to the promotion of a particular moral economy wherein the ‘Russian merchant’ figures as a positive category. Using a case study of a Russian trader in Yiwu, the article illustrates the new ways in which mistrust as well as ‘traditional’ merchant attributes such as patriotism and patriarchal authority, have been harnessed to create a successful Russian transnational business.     

Regional economies,interactive television and interorganizational networks: A case study of an innovation network in Baden‐Württemberg

This paper explores attempts to establish a network of firms and organizations to develop the multimedia industry at a regional level. The paper sets out its review in the context of the regional economy, and then details the nature of the networking process under investigation. An evaluation of networking in this context is provided, based on detailed empirical research. Lessons are drawn from the experiences of seeking economic modernization through organizational networks.