Innovation at the Peripheries Firm Strategy for Enabling Regional Advantages

Innovation scholarship has traditionally leaned towards the analysis of innovation processes linked to conditions found in ‘core’ areas; well-functioning economic hubs and dynamic high-technology sectors. Although more recent work on innovation in emerging economies has begun to broaden the picture, innovation in the ‘peripheral’ regions and sectors of developed economies is still largely unexplored. This book is a unique exploration of how innovation processes operate in peripheral regions, while also looking at the key drivers and challenges organizations face in peripheral areas as they strive to innovate and compete globally.

Adopting interdisciplinary approaches from management studies, economics and geography, this book blends theory-building and quantitative approaches to investigate the periphery and innovation nexus, with a focus on bibliometric approach, topic modelling, and patent-based analysis. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of innovation, strategic management, regional development and sustainability.

Introduction.- Disentangle the periphery & innovation literature.- Decoding the periphery puzzle.- From geography to strategy: the case of Italian peripheries.- Conclusions and future endeavors.

Alba Marino is Assistant Professor in Management and Innovation at the University of Messina, Italy. She has collaborated with the Freedom Project at the University of Pennsylvania and the iBEGIN research team at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. She has held fellowships at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the University of Bologna and the University of Turin. She has been a part-time visiting researcher at the Department of Strategy and Innovation of the Copenhagen Business School. Her current research projects include the role of global co-inventorship networks and migration in knowledge creation, the antecedents of green technologies and the determinants of innovative processes in peripheral areas.