Global Cities’ Cross-border Innovation Networks

The world’s premier metropolitan areas (‘global cities’) are key nodes in international business networks and function as important international innovation hubs. They are prominent spaces for knowledge exchange and collaboration on innovation yet their specific and changing role in global innovation networks has not received due attention. This chapter contributes an analysis of the changing role of global cities in global collaborative innovation networks, 2000–2014, by examining co-invention linkages across 125 global cities in forty-six countries. The international linkages of global cities have increased substantially over the period. Growth has been most pronounced in a number of Asian cities that rank among the top cities in the world in the most recent period. The patterns attest to the growing importance of international collaboration for innovation and the premier position of global cities as spaces facilitating such collaboration.