| Innovation is increasingly understood as an organizational, social and spatial process, as well as a technical challenge. The idea of an 'innovation system' has recently emerged in the geography literature and acknowledges that the way innovation is organized is at least as important as how well it is funded. Proponents of this view cite continuous interaction between firms, synergies with supporting institutions, spatial agglomeration and local coordination as key components of an effective innovation system. For these reasons, the region is viewed as an important organizational scale for innovation, with 'regional innovation networks' considered a favourable form of innovation system. Proponents of this view suggest that peripheral regions can be transformed into technologically competitive regions by developing a network form of innovation system.; For British Columbia, which is technologically peripheral relative to Canada's industrial heartland but which has experienced substantial growth in the high technology sector in the 1990s, especially in Greater Vancouver, the nature of the innovation system is crucial to continued technological development.; This thesis reveals the nature of the innovation system in Greater Vancouver by providing a comparative analysis of innovation in the medical biotechnology and telecommunications hardware industries of the region. A four dimensional framework is developed through which the nature of the regional innovation system of both industries is investigated, revealing important firm, employment, product and production system characteristics. Using an in-depth case study methodology, both industries are examined to determine the presence of a regional innovation network. This evidence allows both high-tech agglomerations to be classified. Two different forms of agglomeration are identified, reflecting differing research, testing, production and marketing requirements in each industry. There is little evidence to indicate the presence of a regional innovation network. Indeed, many companies forego external collaboration and rely solely upon their internal capabilities, emphasizing on-the-job training, project teams and multitasking. Where networking is identified, it is frequently inter-regional in orientation, in order to access capabilities that are absent locally. A lack of complimentarity between the technologies of local companies is viewed as crucial in reducing the potential for local synergies, regional collaboration and network formation. |
