ABSTRACT
The more demanding leading-edge innovation requires outstanding research, a highly skilled and educated labour force, modern industries and enterprises ready to collaborate and to transform ideas into socio-economic development, and hence the smaller is the number of locations. Market niches, highly specialised markets or an optimum combination of technology with particular situations of manufacturing create both opportunities and diversities of socio-economic development based on processes of innovation, which suit the particular situation. Markets and competition can create situations of continuing innovation in manufacturing technologies and of the more effective management of globalising industries. The skills of blue-collar workers, thus, become of critical importance for the economic realisation of innovation. Existing Islands of Innovation and newly emerging innovative locations outside of the traditional centres in western countries benefit from complementary dynamism. Divergent socio-economic contexts clearly indicate divergent processes of innovation.
