Making things better requires technological innovations: new or improved products, services and processes or methods of production.
Innovation can provide a way out of the present crisis for cities and regions (Drewe, 2010a). One may question that the environment of big cities makes the residents more innovative than residents of smaller towns (Johnson, 2010), Medium-sized towns like L. can also cope and by joining a regional network can increase their critical mass. The question is really whether cities and regions qualify as innovative environments. In practice one should reconstruct empirically the innovation process at the nitty-gritty of innovative firms: for example at the firm in L. that represents a success story in the field of innovative lighting. Innovation policies at higher national or European levels more often than not rely too much on framework conditions, financial and others, based on theoretical or hypothetical relationships between presumed enabling factors and innovation.
The crucial question is how to promote innovation.But how to define and explain innovation are questions which need to be answered properly before one can hope to manage innovations successfully (Drewe, 2010b).