Innovation in Real Places

A challenge to prevailing ideas about innovation and a guide to identifying the best growth strategy for your community.Across the world, cities and regions have wasted trillions of dollars on blindly copying the Silicon Valley model of growth creation. Since the early years of the information age, we''ve been told that economic growth derives from harnessing technological innovation. To do this, places must create good education systems, partner with local research universities, and attract innovative hi-tech firms. We have lived with this system for decades, and the result is clear: a small number of regionsand cities at the top of the high-tech industry but many more fighting a losing battle to retain economic dynamism.But are there other models that don''t rely on a flourishing high-tech industry? In Innovation in Real Places, Dan Breznitz argues that there are. The purveyors of the dominant ideas on innovation have a feeble understanding of the big picture on global production and