Territories of Innovation: Innovation as a Collective Process and the Globalization of Competition

Abstract

The forms of production organization, of production process logistics, of defining technological and organizational trajectories, have undergone rather dramatic changes over the past two decades or so. In addition, competitive mechanisms and systems of technological innovation have also changed in innumerable ways and are expected to continue to do so in the course of the foreseeable future. The consumer commodities and equipment producing industries, which underpinned post-war economic growth in most advanced capitalist countries — automobiles, chemicals, heavy engineering — are no longer considered to be the linchpin of national economic recovery and modernization. They have been replaced by advanced knowledge-intensive industries and services; activities whose success is predicated upon continuous technological innovation and organizational adjustment.