- Title
- Knowledge spillovers and innovation spaces in Australia
- Creator
- Couchman, Paul; O'Loughlin, Andrew; McLoughlin, Ian; Ratten, Vanessa
- Date
- 2016
- Type
- Text; Book chapter
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/179311
- Identifier
- vital:15553
- Identifier
- ISBN:978-131544528-1
- Abstract
- The literature on innovation spaces stresses the importance of knowledge spill-overs, particularly local forms that explain the geographic agglomeration of clusters. Local knowledge spillovers are knowledge externalities bounded by geographic region, which foster the flow of information (Ko and Liu, 2015). This enables firms in a region access to knowledge sources and depositories, which may have unintended consequences. Knowledge is often seen as a non-rival production asset so the geographic position of firms can help create positive externalities and lead to economic gain (Zahra, 2015). More importantly, local knowledge spillovers can facilitate further innovation efforts to induce market change. This is evident in countries like Australia, which, despite its large land mass, has the majority of its major regional and urban cities clustered along the eastern coastline.In his seminal contribution to innovation policy debates in Australia, West (2001) examined how successful national innovation systems are built. He argued that Australia’s national innovation system had developed critical gaps since Fed-eration, which occurred on 1 January1901, in particular. ‘...in its ability to mobilize resources, its system for allocating investment to innovation, and– most significantly– its institutions for managing the risk of science-based innovation’ (West, 2001, p.42). His conclusion was that the nation was not in a good posi-tion to build a knowledge-based economy. From the perspective of an economist this may seem to be an incisive analysis. However, we suggest that from the knowledge spillover theory of management and organisation, it overlooks not only the historical dimension of why the Australian economy has developed in the way that it has, but also the political and symbolic dimensions that shapes how it will develop into the future. In this chapter, we seek to put the ‘political’ back into the ‘economy’, and in so doing pursue a perspective which hitherto has been poorly developed in the study of innovation and its management.We argue that innovation and associated government policy is essentially politi-cal in so far as the actors so engaged ‘exert control, influence, or power over each other’ (Lindblom, 1980, p.28) in order to pursue interests and achieve desired ends. "From introduction"
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Relation
- Knowledge spillover-based strategic entrepreneurship Chapter 14 p. 269-292
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- Copyright Routledge
- Subject
- Entrepreneurship; Knowledge management; Industrial management; Strategic planning
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