In an era of intense globalization, the critical role of the region as a center for economic development has sometimes been overlooked. Moreover, innovation is increasingly being recognized as being a critical driver of economic growth and development. However, innovation is no longer being seen as a function of research and development; nor is R&D being seen as being sufficient for the creation of technology-intensive industries and the valuable economic spillovers that result in high value-added jobs and exports. Indeed, much more than ever before, it is the combination of factors that contributes to innovation - ranging over skills, finance, production, user-producer linkages, the capacity of organizations to learn, and multilayered government policies - that make local regions the favorites of fortune.
Using an evolutionary economic perspective, and drawing on a range of disciplines and accomplished scholars, Local and Regional Systems of Innovation explores important issues at a conceptual, methodological and comparative level concerning how successful locations actually construct their comparative advantage.

A In Search of Conceptual Framework.- 1. Local and Regional Systems of Innovation as Learning Socio-Economies.- B Conceptual Perspectives.- 2. Calibrating the Learning Region.- 3. Regional Systems of Innovation and the Blurred Firm.- 4. Modeling Regional Innovation and Competitiveness.- C International and Interregional Perspectives.- 5. Knowledge-Based Industrial Clustering: International Comparisons.- 6. Contrasting U.S. Metropolitan Systems of Innovation.- 7. Contrasting Regional Innovation Systems in Oxford and Cambridge.- 8. Telecoms in New Jersey: Spatial Determinants of Sectoral Investments.- D Perspectives on Canada's Local and Regional Systems of Innovation.- 9. Innovation in Enterprises in British Columbia.- 10. How Do Small Firms Innovate in British Columbia?.- 11. The Dynamics of Regional Innovation in Ontario.- 12. Canada's Technology Triangle.- 13. The Chaudière-Appalaches System of Industrial Innovations.- 14. Saint John, NB. As an Emerging Local System of Innovation.- 15. Canadian Science Parks, Universities, and Regional Development.- E Quo Vadis?.- 16. Some Lessons and Challenges for Model Builders, Data Gatherers and Other Tribes.