POSTCOLONIAL GEOGRAPHIES OF "INNOVATION": SINGAPORE'S TRANS-URBAN TECH STARTUP CLUSTER - BLOCK71 - IN RELATIONAL COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Situated at the intersection of a wide range of fields - including economic geography, innovation studies, urban studies and development geography - this thesis proffers a postcolonial, comparative analysis of the geographies of innovation. Utilizing a trans-urban tech startup cluster - BLOCK71 - as an empirical case, and performing relational comparative work in/from two BLOCK71 urban nodes (Singapore and Jakarta), it demonstrates that geographical (and historical) differences are fundamental, constitutive elements in the construction of ostensibly “global” innovation processes. Surfacing how a restrictive knowledge of innovation - particularly outside the academe - is partially supported by, and has consequently perpetuated, (neo-)colonial hierarchies of people, places and practices, it urges that mainstreaming those subjugated knowledges and (economic) lifeworld-s is a vital starting point for a more global understanding of innovation, whose spatial, conceptual and networked boundaries ought to be reconceived as impermanent and inchoate.