Innovation and Learning in the New Globalized Economy: A Key Driver Within Clusters and Innovation Systems

This volume highlights the importance of interactive, practice-based learning as a means to promote more thorough innovation dynamics in regional and national economies. Successful experiences in Scandanavia and southern European countries are examined, with insightful policy lessons extracted from each case.

BJÖRN T. ASHEIM is Professor and Chair in Economic Geography at the Department of Human Geography, and Director at CIRCLE (Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning Economy), Lund University, Sweden. He is an internationally renowned researcher within economic geography and regional innovation studies. In addition to numerous journal articles he has edited books on SMEs and Regional Innovation Policy (2003) and Clusters and regional development (2006).

MARIO DAVIDE PARRILLI is Associate Professor in Economics andDirector of PhD in Economics and Business Studies at the University of Deusto, Bilbao and San Sebastian, Spain,and Senior Research Fellow at the Basque Institute of Competitiveness, San Sebastian.He has been working on small and medium-sized enterprise development for many years as well as on territorial development, innovation systems and social capital. He has recently published SME cluster development (2007), and High-Technology, productivity and networks (2008).