Urban Competitiveness and Innovation


Book Description

Against the backdrop of today�s climate of economic globalization and the rapid development of information, this timely book explores the complex concept of competitiveness between cities. The expert contributors illustrate that innovation is a




European Cities in Dynamic Competition


Book Description

World population and the number of city dwellers are steadily growing. Globalization and digitalization lead to an increased competition for skilled and creative labor and other economic resources. This is true not only for firms, but increasingly also for cities. The book elaborates on resulting challenges and opportunities for urban management from the European perspective, and discusses theories, methods and tools from business economics to cope with them. Contributions in this volume come from scholars and practitioners of economics, business administration and urban management, and cover aspects ranging from urban dynamics to city marketing. They draw on experiences from several European cities and regions, and discuss strategies to improve city performance including Open Government, Smart City, cooperation and innovation. The book project was initiated and carried out by the Center for Advanced Studies in Management (CASiM), the interdisciplinary research center of HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management. It is addressed to scholars and managers in Europe and beyond, who will benefit from the scientific rigor and useful practical insights of the book.




Delivering Sustainable Competitiveness


Book Description

Global trends such as climate change, digitalisation, enhanced concepts of democracy and the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis are changing the playing field of cities across the world. Urban development objectives are shifting away from being purely concerned with wealth creation and competitiveness, to increasingly combining social and environmental dimensions. In this context, how can cities influence and sustain their competitive position over time? Which new types of urban strategies are emerging, and which organising capacities are proving the most important? This book provides insight into the complex issue of delivering sustainable competitiveness by analysing a number of innovative urban development strategies in context. Questions and topics addressed include: how can new legacies of city events be secured; how can clean technology industries be nurtured through urban regeneration initiatives; and how can the impact of urban safety strategies be enhanced? These and other pivotal questions are explored through close attention to the enabling factors linking ideas with results, such as distributed leadership, collaboration, communication and experimentation. Combining case studies from Europe, Africa, South America and Southeast Asia, the book provides a truly international perspective on the potentials and limitations of a new generation of urban development and competitiveness strategies.




The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies


Book Description

Today, the Bay Area is home to the most successful knowledge economy in America, while Los Angeles has fallen progressively further behind its neighbor to the north and a number of other American metropolises. Yet, in 1970, experts would have predicted that L.A. would outpace San Francisco in population, income, economic power, and influence. The usual factors used to explain urban growth—luck, immigration, local economic policies, and the pool of skilled labor—do not account for the contrast between the two cities and their fates. So what does? The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies challenges many of the conventional notions about economic development and sheds new light on its workings. The authors argue that it is essential to understand the interactions of three major components—economic specialization, human capital formation, and institutional factors—to determine how well a regional economy will cope with new opportunities and challenges. Drawing on economics, sociology, political science, and geography, they argue that the economic development of metropolitan regions hinges on previously underexplored capacities for organizational change in firms, networks of people, and networks of leaders. By studying San Francisco and Los Angeles in unprecedented levels of depth, this book extracts lessons for the field of economic development studies and urban regions around the world.




Urban Competitiveness


Book Description

The factors that make some cities more successful has become an increasingly important policy issue. This book is the first to explore facets of competitiveness in a systematic way that combines theory, evidence and policy implications. Bringing together experts on urban economic performance, it provides a new look at urban competitiveness.




Innovation Capacity and the City


Book Description

This open access book represents one of the key milestones of DESIGNSCAPES, an H2020 CSA (Coordination and Support Action) research project funded by the European Commission under the Call "User-driven innovation: value creation through design-enabled innovation". The book demonstrates that adopting design allows us to embed innovation within the city so as to arrive at feasible answers to complex global challenges. In this way, innovation can become disruptive, while also sparking a dynamic of gradual change in the "urbanscape" it acts within. To explore this potential, the book puts forward the concept of "design enabled innovation in urban environments" and examines the part that the city can play in promoting and facilitating the adoption of design among public and private sector innovators. This leads to a potential evaluation framework in which a given urbanscape is assessed both in terms of its capacity for generating innovation, and of the nature (more or less design-dependent or design-prone) of the innovative initiatives it hosts. This thread of reasoning holds many promising implications, including a possible "third way" between those who dream of an alternative economic model where revenues and growth are sacrificed on the altar of social and environmental respect, and the supporters of the traditional market-based view, who feel it is enough to add a touch of responsibility and concern to a system that should continue rewarding the profitability of innovations. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.




Innovation, Agglomeration and Regional Competition


Book Description

Providing a state-of-the-art overview of research on regional competition and co-operation, this title attempts to fully develop the understanding of the new role of regions and their behaviour, addressing questions such as how and why do regions compete.




Urban Competitiveness


Book Description

During the past 25 years the burden of managing economic policy for competitiveness has devolved to cities and to urban regions. National governments have increasingly been focused on staving off fiscal collapse. Mayors and local administrations have become very creative and active in looking after the state of their local economy and have developed extensive agencies for inter-city cooperation and action. This book explores this evolving role of cities and urban regions. Intelligent and rational policy must be based on an accurate understanding of the situation at hand and of the economic theory that can be utilized in the assessment of the most effective means that can be deployed. This book examines the theoretical contributions of economists and geographers and through the analyses of the performance of various cities will give the reader an understanding of the logic behind rational policy formation. Evaluation of a city’s relative competitiveness is a controversial matter and this book provides a full treatment of the various approaches. Finally, it examines the experiences with competitiveness of several cities in North America and in Europe. Urban Competitiveness: Theory and Practice confirms that many cities in trying times do have a mechanism for enhancing their competitiveness and can work to create the sort of economic life the city’s residents want.




Innovation and the Growth of Cities


Book Description

Zoltan Acs explores the relationship between industrial innovation and economic growth at regional level and reaches conclusions as to why some regions grow and others decline. The book focuses on innovation and the growth of cities by the use of endogenous growth theory.




The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth


Book Description

"Innovation and entrepreneurship are ubiquitous today, both as fields of study and as starting points for conversations among experts in government and economic development. But while these areas on continue to attract public and private investments, many measurements of their resulting economic growth-including productivity growth and business dynamism-have remained modest. Why this difference? Because not all business sectors are the same, and the transformative gains of some industries have been offset by stagnation or contraction in others. Accordingly, a nuanced understanding of the economy requires a nuanced understanding of where innovation and entrepreneurship occur and where they matter. Answering these questions allows for strategic public investment and the infrastructure for economic growth.The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth, the latest entry in the NBER conference series, seeks to codify these answers. The editors leverage industry studies to identify specific examples of productivity improvements enabled by innovation and entrepreneurship, including those from new production technologies, increased competition, new organizational forms, and other means. Taken together, the volume illuminates whether the contribution of innovation and entrepreneurship to economic growth is likely to be concentrated, be it selected sectors or more broadly"--