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In this section we provide a comparative view on three key themes in innovation across BRICS cities – the strength of the higher education sector, policy initiatives to support innovation, and innovation clusters.

STRENGTH OF HIGHER EDUCATION

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» Shenzhen municipality is determined to upgrade innovation capacity and has created the cross-border ‘Shenzhen-Hong Kong Innovation Circle’ to compensate for its internal lack of leading research institutions;

» The Government of Moscow is actively promoting innovation through its programme ‘Mos- cow – innovation capital of Russia’;

» The St. Petersburg city government has been actively supporting innovation in terms of its overall strategy of building a ‘global, smart, humane city’;

» In 2015 the Guangzhou Municipality released its ‘Decision to speed up implementing the in- novation-driven development strategy’ with an ambitious ten-point action plan; and » In 2016, Tianjin released its new policy on city innovation, with a focus on developing technol-

ogy in small- and medium-scale enterprise – the so-called ‘little giants in S&T’.

There are many ways in which innovation is supported by these and other cities. These include: » Programmes to attract world-class talent to a city;

» City investment in broadband, supercomputing and the cloud; » Municipal procurement policies to support self-innovation; » Entrepreneurship schools and virtual university campuses; » Inter-city learning networks;

» Direct investment in R&D, and incentives to support private investment in R&D; » Development of hi-tech infrastructure for start-up firms;

» Linking firms to venture capital; » Creation of innovation teams;

» Regulatory reform including IP protection (in countries such as China, where powers do vest at local level);

» Special financial instruments to support innovation (e.g. risk sharing, venture capital, equity shares, specialised credit services);

» Special incentives, ranging from tax breaks to innovation awards; » Common service technology platforms;

» Special training programmes, with a focus on technology and management; » Improved (streamlined and deregulated) procedures for business registration;

» Business incubators, technology parks, innovation centres and other spaces that have the hard and soft infrastructure to support innovation; and more.

There are a number of cities in the BRICS that have implemented some or all of these measures; but there are many which are lagging behind, and which have little or no specific effort directed towards economic innovation. The most successful cities are those taking a systemic approach to supporting innovation, rather than implementing projects on an ad hoc basis.

INNOVATION CLUSTERS

One of the key approaches in supporting innovation is the grouping of innovation support into spatial clusters.

Spatial targeting has been a strong element of China’s industrial policy since the creation of the first Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the early 1980s. At first these zones were mainly about attracting inward investment, through offering generous incentives such as tax breaks and exemptions from import duty. In recent years a similar approach has been taken to innovation, with various measures in support of innovative firms offered in special zones. These zones have a hierarchy of status. The

into a global innovation centre.

City 2016 Rankings

XIAMEN Xiamen University (No. 37)

ROORKEE

(UTTARAKHAND) Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR) (No. 39)

CHANGCHUN Jilin University (No. 40)

TOMSK Tomsk State University (No. 42)

PORTO ALEGRE Universidade Federal do Rio Grande Do Sul (No. 46)

TSHWANE (PRETORIA) University of Pretoria (No. 49)

Source: QS Rankings 2016

The leading sites of tertiary education in the BRICS are Beijing (six universities in the BRICS top 50), Moscow (five), Shanghai (four) and the Greater São Paulo region (four). The next tier is cities which have at least two universities in the BRICS top 50; these are Nanjing, Cape Town, Wuhan, Delhi, Rio de Janeiro and Tianjin.

There is no direct correspondence between size and educational stature. India’s large cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata), for example, are still lower on the educational rung than their size would sug- gest. In China, the mega-cities of Beijing and Shanghai are major hubs of tertiary education, but the secondary cities of Nanjing, Wuhan and Tianjin rank higher than the mega-cities of Guang- zhou, Chongqing and Shenzhen. In South Africa, modestly-sized Cape Town ranks high in terms of tertiary education.

Of course, it is not just the quality of tertiary research and educational institutions but also the focus of these institutions on innovation, and the links between these institutions and industry, that matter. While there is no comparative data on this, city-specific information suggests consid- erable variation in this regard.

INNOVATION POLICY

There are multiple factors that influence the innovative capacity of cities. They include, for exam- ple, the history of the city (e.g. Shanghai’s cosmopolitanism), its educational strengths, and even its physical attributes (as in the case of Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro and Hangzhou). It is evident, however, that policy does matter; and that determined action across the levels of government can improve a city’s innovation prospects.

All the BRICS countries have policies at national level to improve innovation, although with vary- ing success. China is arguably the country with the most resolute and successful policies and pro- grammes in building national innovation systems, but the other countries are all supporting inno- vation through national initiatives to varying degrees.

There is more scope for supporting innovation through city-level interventions in some contexts than in others. In China, city governments play a significant role in economic development policy, and often have highly sophisticated policies in support of innovation. In India, local governments are weak, but state governments play key although highly varying roles. An exception may be Mumbai, where a local growth coalition, Mumbai First, has been active in support of innovation. City governments generally have less power in this area in Brazil, South Africa and Russia, but pro- active city governments such as São Paulo, Moscow and St. Petersburg do have active programmes in support of innovation.

Among leading cities in the BRICS are those with high ambitions for innovation:

» In 2015 the Mayor of Shanghai announced that his number-one priority was to ensure that the city becomes a “globally influential technological innovation hub”21_;

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