Abstract
Innovation and economic development policies have a clear territorial pattern to them through the emergence of clusters, industrial districts, regional innovation systems, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and other forms of territorial agglomeration. In recent times, the role of networks—both local and international—for connecting agglomerations and generating innovation has become more important. New policy frameworks have been developed to generate new or strengthen existing hotspots of innovation, such as cluster policies, entrepreneurial discovery, or smart specialization. Search processes are at the heart of these policies. They are important to identify relevant problems and to track if policy implementation is effective. Effectively prioritizing, evaluating, and connecting policies requires information from different sources. Geographical information systems (GIS) have been a key input for such policies, since they capture the capabilities and performance at different territorial levels with easily accessible visualizations. However, static measures of agglomerations are not sufficient for policymakers who need a better understanding of the dynamic drivers for those changes. Meanwhile, innovation networks usually leave a paper trail in publications, patents, and formal partnerships, but only in the subset of industries that publish, patent, and engage in formal R&D collaborations. Lack of suitable information challenges both policymakers and spatial analysts. This article discusses the role of information in governmental search processes with a focus on innovation policies. We describe how GIS has contributed to the accumulated knowledge of innovation policies. We present current challenges to existing datasets and methods to gather new information, and identify opportunities to use new analytics to improve our understanding of informal and territorial networks and emerging technologies.
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