Introduction to the retrospective section: innovation in China, grassroots innovation, and city regions

Abstract

This issue of Innovation: Management, Policy and Practice is the last one before the journal transitions to be Innovation: Organization and Management. To celebrate the achievements of the journal, we decided to invite the authors of three of the most influential past articles in Innovation: Management, Policy and Practice to reflect on their earlier contributions. We asked the authors to consider how their ideas and research findings had progressed since their original papers.In what follows, the authors provide their assessments, and it is fascinating to read how research has progressed in our understanding of innovation in China, in alternative technology development and sustainable development, and in city-regions. The blossoming of literature in each of these fields indicates the relevance and prescience of these earlier articles.There is a common and powerful theme that lies within all three articles that can be simply summarized as 'innovation by and for whom?' As Thomas Piketty (2014), Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) and others have shown, the growing inequalities in society are having extraordinarily pernicious effects. The growth of populist and authoritarian regimes around the world reflects the fear of change amongst substantial proportions of the population and their growing disenfranchisement from the fruits of innovation and their social benefits.Gu Shulin, Sylvia Schwaag Serger, and Bengt-Âke Lundvall (this issue) restate China's commitment to innovation as a driver of economic growth and social development. They point to advances in China's innovation capability, but also highlight the problems of income disparities, especially between rural and urban areas, and the consequences of environmental damage. One of the challenges for the future, they suggest, is the development of more forms of participatory governance of economic organization. On one level this includes encouraging more participative behaviours in cooperatives, at another it means breaking down traditional social and cultural adherence to hierarchies. They call for broad and deep participation and transparency in decisions to assist the creation of new ideas and the circulation and use of knowledge.Adrian Smith (this issue) writes about the extent of the changes needed to steer innovations to make them more environmentally sustainable and socially just. He points to the way societies have choices in whether and how we innovate, and that deep-seated challenges in society need profound change in the ways economic life is organized. Smith argues the importance of grassroots innovation and the 'kaleidoscope of community groups developing solutions that embody their aspirations and values'. He also refers to the value of approaches to new technology that are more human-centred and are oriented to production that has social use rather than simply market exchange.David Wolfe and Allison Bramwell (this issue) discuss the importance of cityregions for economic growth, and argue their economic success depends on the quality of place and the ability to promote social equity and community cohesion. …