Inclusive innovation in cities: from buzzword to policy

‘Inclusive innovation’ has become an increasingly important subnational policy agenda. This paper reviews this agenda, critiques its current usage and presents a new framework for how the concept can be applied by city government. Efforts to shape the direction, improve participation in and share the benefits of innovation should be an important part of place-based innovation policy. Yet, inclusive innovation strategies face three related problems: neophilia, a tendency for technological fixes and the lack of local powers. The paper concludes with a framework for how the concept could be used by policymakers to link innovation with better distributional outcomes.