Innovation

Increasingly over the past several months I have working on linking Innovative Companies/ideas in the UK and around the world. This section will act as an electronic noticeboard to help develop these links and forge relationships. Please visit this section regularly for up-dates.

• From a theoretical perspective, the regional dimension to innovation stems from two key sources:

i. Tacit knowledge, which does not travel very well

ii. A well-defined set of external economies of scale that are realised within what Marshall termed industrial districts, but what are today more frequently referred to as clusters.

• Agglomeration economies in production, pools of skilled labour, networking, human capital and knowledge spillovers are key external economies that are subject to processes of cumulative causation.

• This leads to a third important factor, namely, the ability of firms and regions to learn, which is determined by their stock of human capital and knowledge, and by their absorptive capacity.