Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
big cities have an advantage because such firms have been deliberately located
in such places to serve the large potential market for their services. In addition,
suppliers to firms
may also help in innovation. For example, firms often ask suppli-
ers to upgrade their products, or to develop replacements in response to new product
development, and may provide crucial knowledge or logistical support to their sup-
pliers to help the process of innovation. Also suppliers may suggest innovative new
products or processes that help to create change in the sponsoring firm, whilst many
businesses engage in joint ventures to share not only personnel but also the often
large development costs associated with new ventures. These stimuli to the demand
side innovation process are particularly obvious in times of war or national military
rivalry when governments actively seek solutions from firms to create new types of
products, as seen in such developments as atomic energy, radar and new weapons
systems. Although these demand side advantages may be helped where clusters
of interacting firms are found in an area, the marketing of successful products to
distant places frequently adds another international dimension to the locational at-
tributes underlying the innovation process.
11.5.5
Invention-Innovation Support
Although it is important to understand the processes by which knowledge is ac-
quired and used in the innovative process, one of the key issues already identified in
the discussion of the various uncertainties has to be resolved. This is the degree to
which there is support, or barriers, from two types of governance: one from within
the firm, the other from the political system. In the first case effective management
within the firm is needed to provide opportunities, not barriers for invention and
innovation, to develop and reward entrepreneurial initiative, as well as providing
sufficient finance and other aids to support the creative process. The second comes
from various levels of government within the state. It also seems that more success
is achieved if the innovator lives in a society with a supportive government that
encourages the creative process. Unfortunately, the history of attempts to pick win-
ners of new innovations by governments through the world is littered with failure
and huge wastes of public funds as Lerner's (
2009
) topic, '
Boulevard of Broken
Dreams
', has shown. Yet we must be careful not to be too condemning. Mazzu-
cato's (
2013
) study, '
The Entrepreneurial
State', has argued that although there
have been failures in industrial policies, government financing of research, directly,
or indirectly through research grants, has either created many successful inven-
tions, or been the enabler for subsequent innovative activity, especially by provid-
ing basic research, which is why she described the state as entrepreneurial. For
example, parts of the consumer-electronics industry were dependent on the way that
the armed forces help pioneer GPS systems, the Internet and provided a lot of early
funding for the advances made in Silicon Valley. However it did take creative abil-
ity to adapt many of the ideas obtained from other sources into consumer-friendly
products, such as those associated with Apple in particular. Moreover, in the case
of funding, it must also be remembered that major research initiatives often involve
