Resilient regions and open innovation: the evolution of smart cities and civic entrepreneurship

Abstract

Resilience, and particularly the resilience of urban and regional economies, depends on underlying innovation capacities in those cities and regions. In an era of rapid technological change and devolved governance, innovation occurs in policy design and implementation as well as in the more familiar domains associated with new products, processes, materials, and markets. Innovation is a factor in how resilient firms, intermediaries, and supply chains face shifting market conditions and absorb new technology. This chapter describes two key intersections between resilience and innovation: innovative governance characterized by policy diffusion networks, and regional economic ecosystems characterized by open innovation. The discussion of policy diffusion networks is based on an analysis of the scope, character, and geographic distribution of such networks since 2011. The discussion of open innovation and regional economic ecosystems relies on an industry case study of “smart cities†as an enabling industry defined by the integration of information and communications technologies with urban infrastructure deployment. The combination of these two empirical cases of evolving mechanisms of and for technology diffusion into cities—as places and as institutions—highlights the intersections between resilience and innovation.