Global value chains and regional systems of innovation: Towards a critical juncture?

Abstract

Over recent years, the world has witnessed unexpected challenges - including the COVID-19 pandemic and significant geopolitical tensions. These events have had substantial impacts on both Global Value Chains and Regional Innovation Systems – two complementary analytical scopes that compose the complex geography of innovation. This has led governments to take drastic measures on different fronts and scholars to argue about the surging of a phase of de-globalization in which Global Value Chains are being transformed and restructured, potentially altering the geography of economic activity that has been forged over the last decades. It is uncertain how countries, regions, firms and individuals will respond to multifaceted crises and productive rearrangements, which ones will be more resilient and better capable of doing so than others. In this introduction to the Special Issue “Global Value Chains and Regional Systems of Innovation: Towards a Critical Juncture?” we discuss the local-global dynamics of innovation and propose a critical appraisal on how key contextual parameters have changed, on the one hand, and the potential outcomes of these shifts, on the other. We outline pressing issues for debate among scholars, policymakers and practitioners as well as offer elements to begin a discussion on the critical junctures that lay ahead. We also present the insightful articles that compose this Special Issue.