From silicon valley to the levant: Innovation in the eastern mediterranean

Abstract

Market economies in the eastern Mediterranean are notcounted among ideal-typical innovators. But this pic-turemaybechanging.Thisarticleexplorestheemerginginnovation systems in the eastern Mediterranean byexamining recent data and the literatures on varieties ofcapitalism and innovation systems. Through the casesof Cyprus, Israel, and Turkey, the study argues thatthe varieties of capitalism framework, by focusing onperformance at the macro level, disregards the subna-tional performance of these outlier markets, which havepromising regional or local innovation systems. Fos-tering cooperation among these emerging innovationsystems could become a valuable instrument for over-coming deeply rooted conflicts in the eastern Mediter-ranean, which has turned into a “crisis zone” due torecent energy discoveries.