Abstract

Economic geography has offered several insights to understand the role of geography in shaping creativity, innovation and the way they are connected in space. Unfortunately, most attention has been devoted to analyzing cities and urban regions as the ideal context where creativity and innovation come together. Emerging counter-narratives are challenging this urban perspective and proposing that creativity-led innovation can also thrive in rural, more peripheral, places. These counter-narratives build upon intriguing case studies and country-specific surveys, yet comparative quantitative evidence is missing, partly due to a lack of comprehensive and relevant data on innovation able to do justice to rural innovation too. To fill this gap, we propose to use original trademark-based indicators to better reveal creativity-led innovation across regions and in rural contexts too. We focus on European regions and build a database combining large scale occupational data with patent and trademark activity for the period 2011-2019. Our findings suggest that creativity-led innovation processes are at play in both urban and rural regions, but can only be uncovered in rural regions when broadening the innovation metrics used. These findings bear key policy implications, as they inform efforts towards formulating and monitoring regional innovation ambitions which are more sensitive to the characteristics of rural contexts.