Global innovation networks, territory and services innovation

Abstract

This chapter is about the “emergent” phenomenon of Global Innovation Networks (GINs). These operate in manufacturing as well as services markets. The emphasis here is on their configurations in services markets. From a “complexity” perspective GINs are the self-organizing means by which innovation shifts and dynamises the structure of competition of globalised industries. In ICT, the first industry studied, a huge transition occurs as old desktop and PC models are replaced by burgeoning markets for “smartphones” and “tablets”. New “territorial innovation systems” arise, fostering regionalised service, design and logistics innovations where service “modules” are recombined in novel ways. In the innovative financial services activity of “securitization”, which is more hierarchical in its knowledge “pyramid” than the somewhat flatter ICT one, more of the value curve remains in what many consider an excessively rewarded GIN heartland (Wall Street) but GIN links to innovation islands in Asia for specific specialist tasks at affordable prices may also be found. The chapter concludes that globalisation is an evolutionary process beyond the reach of a single “global controller” and should be understood as non-linear and crisis-prone rather than linear and in equilibrium.