This report looks at the influence of a city-region’s history in its ability to innovate.

Key findings:

• A city-region’s past determines what is possible while the present controls what possibilities are explored.
• New ideas and new development pathways appear more often in cities without long industrial histories.
• Large-scale and multi-purpose initiatives combined with policies that tolerate certain levels of redundancy have higher chances of success than those targeted at increasing local innovation.
• The need for international knowledge networks is paramount in increasing local innovation.

Buoyed by the success of Silicon Valley, Hsinchu region, or Helsinki, innovation is seen by leading regions as the key to staying ahead; and in those that lag, as an opportunity to catch up.

The result has been a plethora of ambitious innovation strategies. Unfortunately, the common thread has often been under-delivery.

This failure to deliver has been blamed on many things: lack of institutions, lack of ambition, and lack of skilled policymakers. However, what has been less straightforward to understand is the extent to which such change was ever possible.

In this research project, we have worked with leading researchers from Oxford Brookes and Cambridge Universities to use advanced economic techniques to uncover the extent to which ‘history matters’.

Authors:

James Simmie, Juliet Carpenter, Andrew Chadwick and Ron Martin