This handbook brings together a group of leading scholars, thinkers, policy makers, and business leaders to identify, articulate, and analyse what influences and shapes local competitiveness and what places can do to enhance their economic performance.

In this exciting work, Link and Scott summarize more than a decade of their research on public support of R&D in small, entrepreneurial firms, concluding public R&D investments, primarily funded by the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, are indeed bending the arc of...

Intellectual property protection mechanisms (IPPMs) are critical to fostering innovation and their relevance has grown enormously with the increased trade in goods and services involving intellectual property. Scholars have investigated what factors facilitate or hinder the use of such IP...

Many researchers have studied correlates of business formations. Through the case-based and statistical literature several broad categories of influence on the entrepreneurial decision to start a new business have been identified. We contribute to this literature though our statistical analysis...