Global Conference on Economic Geography 2018: “Dynamics in an Unequal World”

Cologne, July 24 – 28, 2018

Call for papers

INNOVATION IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Session organisers: Päivi Oinas & Lucía Gómez

Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Finland

The role of innovation has been central in debates on economic growth and development for decades. It used to be the case that innovation was generally associated with advanced economies, their firms, their dynamic cities, innovation systems, or innovative clusters. Those were taken to possess the resources, possibilities for creative interactions, supportive organisations, institutions, and infrastructures. We now also begin to know increasingly about how emerging countries invest in education, learning and knowledge generation, and about the ability of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) to tap into sources of knowledge elsewhere so as to advance knowledge processes at home. It is not yet as extensively studied how less developed countries and regions put effort into upgrading their products, processes, and services. “Emerging” and ”developing” countries and regions in the global South are differently positioned in terms of access to resources and supporting environments but both are increasingly becoming integrated in processes of innovation.

Papers are called for that help us shed light on the diverse ways in which countries, cities, and regions in the global South are involved in generating innovative products, processes, services, technologies, organizational solutions, social processes, and so forth, through mechanisms such as:

- local entrepreneurship;

- foreign direct investment bringing in new knowledge, and tapping into local creative processes;

- transnational and trans-local networks of firms, organisations, individuals, public bodies and intercultural exchanges;

- cities adopting urban planning practices for the attraction of investment and talent, and for stimulating creative interactions;

- university engagement with the local economies and communities;

- digital transfer and local adaptation of innovative solutions

- etc.

Please, submit your abstract through the conference website https://www.gceg2018.com/call-for-sessions-and-papers.html by 15 March 2018.

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