Innovation in the developing world and notably, the so‐called latecomers, suffers from a real crisis, not a maturity crisis known in certain advanced countries but a crisis of birth in the framework of an innovation life cycle to be determined (Djeflat 2011). While the approach in terms of innovation systems is real and attracts a great deal of attention from policy makers, very little work has been done on Late‐comers like African and Latin America Countries to understand how they could engage in a real Emergence policy of their innovation system in a sustainable manner. Analysis of the emergent phases of systems of innovation construction is thus becoming a key issue as the systems of innovation approach is being applied in developing country contexts throughout the world. Within this discussion of system of innovation emergence with the Globelics and other academic communities, significantly less attention has been paid to the emergence of territorial systems of innovation (TIS) in different types of developing country contexts, and even in the North´s less developed regions (Cumming 2014, Djeflat 2012).
The objective is to take advantage of the learning opportunity as emergence and the initial configuration dynamics of this process are just now happening in some places throughout the diverse South. There are greater advances in the more developed southern countries, especially around significant metropolitan areas, it is still a relatively recent phenomenon and the TIS are in an early development phase.
This is a call to stimulate South – South collaboration between researchers from Africa and Latin-America to make a contribution to the understanding of emergence of territorial – sub – national – innovation systems in a diversity of developing country contexts. There is also an intention to use the comparative results of this research to develop policy proposals for national and sub – national governments for how and why to support these emergent processes with “gardening polities” (Sutz and Arocena).
The initiative to develop this Special Issue looks to bring together teams of scholars who are already working with a broad and developmentally oriented system of innovation approach, with an emphasis on territorial innovation dynamics.
