Innovation Networks and Territorial Dynamics: A Tentative Typology

Abstract

This chapter has been written within the framework of the GREMI (European Research Group on Innovative Milieux). The purpose of that Group’s investigations and reflections is to develop a territorialized analysis of innovation by highlighting the role of the environment and, more specifically, that of the milieu in technological creation processes (Aydalot, 1986; Camagni, 1991; Maillat, Quévit and Senn, 1993). The object of this chapter is specifically to understand how the milieu is transformed through multiple interactions, to highlight the various networks involved in the innovation process and, more generally, to show how relations between the productive forces on the one hand and the urban and regional milieu on the other are transformed and what the result is. This general problem hinges principally on three fields of inquiry:

• the innovation network: how does it come into being (federative project), what is its architecture and strategy, how does it work and, finally, how does it evolve? We shall seek to show how interactions between the various players develop, to study the rules and principles that govern their relations and, finally, to understand the way in which learning processes develop within the innovation network.

• relations between the milieu and the innovation network: what is the function of the milieu in the organization of the innovation network and what is its impact on its development?

• the effects of the innovation network on the milieu: what is the impact on the local milieu of the learning processes that are developed by the innovation networks? More specifically, how do the innovation networks help to increase the milieu’s creative abilities?