Innovation happens in systems not in silos

Innovation is seen as the result of new knowledge and information obtained from cumulative and evolving processes that mobilize various sources of knowledge. This conceptualization of innovation centers on the interactive and systemic nature of the process (Edquist, 1997; Lundvall, 1992). Unlike the neoclassical approach which defined innovation as the result of a sequential and technocratic process and corresponded to a purely technical act based on the production of a new product, the new conception of innovation promotes a vision that integrates technical change into more global changes.

Innovation is a cumulative process of solving problems that involve different forms of learning, the most famous of which are learning through research, through practice, through the use of advanced techniques, through interaction, through industrial externalities. and by regional externalities.

Taking its meaning throughout the economy and society, innovation is also a social process between different actors within a given environment (Asheim and Isasken, 2002). The interaction of the different actors is at the origin of a system effect mobilizing different knowledge bases according to the actors and therefore conditions the possibilities of innovation.

Innovation is also a process based on close relationships, favorable conditions for interactions and learning with a view to exploring new combinations of knowledge and opportunities (Maskell and Malmberg, 1999). It is intimately linked and stimulated by geographical proximity, which makes it possible to increase the interactive capacity of forms of learning by facilitating the relationship between the innovative organization and the external inputs that are necessary during the innovation process. Therefore, national innovation systems are seen as the result of regional innovation systems. A regional innovation system refers to spatial concentrations of companies and public and semi-public organizations (universities, research institutes, technology transfer and liaison agencies, business associations, government bodies, etc.) which produce innovation on the basis of interactions and collective learning through common institutional practices. According to this perspective, the regional innovation system is intimately linked to the knowledge economy and to the new conception of innovation as the result of a social and territorial product, stimulated not only by locally anchored resources but also by social and cultural context in which it operates (Bathelt et al., 2004).