Rethinking innovation Innovation is widely seen as the key to regional and local economic advantage (for example, Barkham, 1992; Chandra and MacPherson, 1994; MacPherson, 1992; Simmie, 1998; Suarez-Villa, 1991). The innovative capacity of a place dictates its economic fate: places that can tap into, attract, and support innovative capacity will prosper; those that cannot will languish (Amin and Wilkinson, 1999; Helmsing, 2001; Keeble et al, 1999). Geographers' fascination with innovation grows out of this presumed link to economic advantage. Empirical studies document how innovative activities cluster in space and seek to explain why some places are more innovative than others and how, in turn, economic growth is related to innovative milieux (Feldman, 2000). Probably the most inclusive definition of innovation is that it is ``the creation and exploitation of new ideas'' (Kanter, 2000, page 168). More economically specific is Feldman's definition that emphasizes the links between capitalism and the competitive edge that innovation confers: ``Innovation... is the novel application of economically valuable knowledge'' (2000, page 373). (1) Although these definitions of innovation are couched in fairly broad terms (they make no explicit mention of technology, for example), geographers and economists concerned with local or regional economic development in Western economies almost invariably use the term `innovation' to mean `technological innovation,' and in their empirical work are usually concerned with manufacturing activities [although Nijkamp et al (1997) and a few others include the business services sector]. Rethinking innovation: context and gender Megan K Blake Department of Geography, University of Sheffield,Winter Street, Sheffield, S10 2TN, England; e-mail: M.Blake@Sheffield.ac.uk Susan Hanson School of Geography, Clark University,Worcester, MA 01610, USA; e-mail: Shanson@clarku.edu Received 12 January 2004; in revised form 12 July 2004 Environment and Planning A 2005, volume 37, pages 681 ^ 701 Abstract. Geographers have a keen interest in innovation because of its connection to regional economic advantage. We argue that, to date, understandings of innovation are predominantly techno- logical and product driven and defined in universal terms such that the nature of innovation is stripped of its contextual influence and is overly masculinist. Through combined analysis of interview material from two complementary studies on the gendering of entrepreneurship based in the United States, this paper challenges current conceptualisations of innovation within geography. We show how the context, both social and geographical, of an innovation is elementary to its identification as innovative. Moreover, we reveal some of the many instances of innovation that occur in economic sectors and by agents that are typically ignored or undervalued by current research and by policy. Our analysis challenges researchers and policymakers to expand their concepts of regional and urban development beyond those processes associated with technologically defined and growth-oriented originality, such that notions of local development may enhance the social well-being of places and be more gender inclusive. DOI:10.1068/a3710 (1) Similarly, Porter (1990, page 45, from Simmie et al, 2002) sees innovation as an attempt ``to create competitive advantage by perceiving or discovering new and better ways of competing in an industry and bringing them to market.''