Dynamics of Innovation: Evidence from Urban and Non-Urban Contexts.

This thesis examines how innovation emerges and is sustained in non- metropolitan contexts, focusing on situations in which spatial concentration does not provide a sufficient explanation for innovative activity. While innovation studies have traditionally associated innovation with dense urban environments and localized spillovers, empirical research increasingly documents innovative practices in rural and peripheral areas. These cases are often acknowledged without being fully integrated into explanatory frameworks. As a result, the processes through which innovation persists under conditions of limited density remain only partially examined. The thesis addresses this problem by shifting analytical attention toward how innovation is accessed, interpreted, and enacted when proximity- based coordination is weaker. The thesis follows a paper-based research design composed of three analytically connected studies, combining conceptual, quantitative, and qualitative analysis. The first paper develops a conceptual framework that revisits the relationship between innovation, tradition, and non-metropolitan contexts, treating continuity and embeddedness as orienting conditions for action. The second paper employs quantitative analysis to examine how relational networks structure access to external knowledge beyond geographic proximity. The third paper uses qualitative interviews with rural entrepreneurs in an inner area of Italy to investigate how innovation is interpreted and evaluated within everyday organizational practice. The findings show that innovation beyond metropolitan environments cannot be explained solely through spatial conditions. Innovation emerges through relational access to knowledge, accumulated experience grounded in past practices, and evaluative processes embedded in local routines. Relational connections shape which knowledge becomes available, while continuity informs how new information is interpreted. Innovation takes place when novelty is assessed as meaningful and acceptable within established ways of working. These processes operate selectively and do not lead to uniform outcomes across contexts. By articulating this process-oriented perspective, the thesis clarifies how innovation can be sustained when xx spatial concentration does not organize learning by default, within debates on innovation and geography.