The spatial dimension of innovation and socio-technical change: insights from economic geography

Abstract

This habilitation thesis explores the spatial dimension of innovation and socio-technical change. While innovation is a key driver of economic development and socio-technical transformation, its geographical embeddedness remains insufficiently understood. The thesis addresses this gap by examining the origins, situatedness, and implications of innovation processes, with particular attention to the bioeconomy and the twin transition – domains of high political and societal relevance. The thesis is a cumulative one, combining 21 published articles. The theoretical foundation of this thesis draws on (and contributes to) three main strands of scholarship: First, literature on the geography of innovation, including frameworks for analyzing national, regional, technological, and global innovation systems, alongside debates on mission- and challenge-oriented policy. Second, evolutionary economic geography, including theoretical approaches to understanding specialization, diversification, relatedness, and complexity, which help explain why regional development pathways are often path-dependent and uneven. Third, transition studies, including perspectives on socio-technical systems and imaginaries, highlighting how institutional and cultural elements stabilize or transform existing systems and how visions of the future influence their directionality. Together, these strands inform an integrative perspective on the spatiality of innovation and socio-technical change. Methodologically, the thesis employs a mixed-methods design. Quantitative analyses use patent data to trace the emergence, diffusion, and geography of innovation activities, complemented by novel datasets and indicators such as machine-learning-based classifications of patent texts, large-scale web-mining of firms and municipalities, and a geolocated corpus of German news articles. Sequence analysis is introduced as a methodological innovation, enabling the study of region-specific temporal trajectories. In addition, qualitative studies provide conceptual and inductive insights into socio-technical imaginaries, legitimacy struggles, and actor constellations. The cumulative work shows that innovation and socio-technical change are spatially uneven, shaped by regional preconditions, multi-scalar linkages, and technology-specific features. It demonstrates the value of combining quantitative and qualitative approaches to capture both systematic evidence and contested, imaginative dimensions. Overall, the thesis contributes to geographically informed understandings of sustainability transitions and to debates on policies fostering inclusive, place-sensitive pathways of change.