Creating Collaborative Advantage : Innovation and Knowledge Creation in Regional Economies

This book is about the language, concepts and practice of creating ''collaborative advantage''. There is an emerging new collaborative economic order where innovation results from an integrated process of collaboration between policymakers, business and society. In many parts of the world, the focus for this collaboration is neither at national level nor that of the individual enterprise, but at a regional level. The contributions in Creating Collaborative Advantage examine new trends in innovation policy that reflect this collaborative thinking and regional focus.

In the emerging new collaborative economic order, innovation is achieved by an integrated process of collaboration between policymakers, business and society. Often, the focus for this collaboration is at a regional level. Creating Collaborative Advantage examines the trends in innovation policy that reflect this new thinking and regional focus. This book develops the view that collaboration is one of many ways of organising a competitive economy. It asks how, when and where collaboration is a meaningful way of organisation. It explores collaboration at business level, business networks between companies, and a wider collaborative coalition between business and public authorities. It is not a manual, a ''how to do it'', because there is no single straightforward universal model to replace current orthodoxy on economic development, but it will enable people to learn. The contributors to this unique book have been involved with the implementation of some of the most outstanding examples of collaborative approaches, it therefore gives an outstanding picture of diversity, inbuilt comparisons and contrast, and debate between the cases. The co-authors give their understanding of these issues, but the book tries to establish some common understandings and bring the concept of collaboration to a larger audience, and to increase interest in a field which requires further exploration. Policy makers, advisers and administrators at all levels of government, those involved in research and development, and business leaders and educators, will find this book invaluable, together with readers having an academic interest in the subject of innovation.