From Liability to Opportunity: Reconceptualizing the Role of Periphery in Innovation

The concept of periphery has remained implicit and ambiguous in economic geography, often characterized by normative accounts of laggardness and lack of innovation. In this paper we review discussions of the periphery in the context of the geography of innovation and unpack the logical fallacy of normative understandings of the term. Instead, we propose a relative definition of periphery as distant, disperse and disconnected positions within a field. We further combine geographic and network dimensions of peripherality into a dual core-periphery model to capture the complexity of geographic peripheries and centers, which each can house central and peripheral actors. An understanding of duality rather than dualism between core and periphery offers new potential to theorize the divisions and dynamics of innovation labor, which benefit from and transit between core and periphery positions in the course of the innovation journey.