Introduction: There are good reasons to study urban innovation from a systemic perspective. A key finding in innovation research is that organizations rarely innovate in isolation, but in interaction with clients, competitors, suppliers, and other organizations. A system perspective is useful in understanding and analyzing these interactions. Cities and urban regions are increasingly recognized as key milieus in which these interactions occur. The urban innovation system approach conceptualizes the city or urban region as a context in which innovations emerge from complex interactions between urban actors—firms, citizens, governments, knowledge institutes— in a particular institutional setting. The systemic view of innovation departs from traditional linear models that depict innovation as a staged process that starts with (basic) scientific research and ends with commercialization by companies. Innovation processes are much more complex and diverse, influenced by multiple actors that interact in networks with feedback loops, and involving many types of knowledge beyond scientific knowledge. Urban innovation systems are nested in innovation systems on other spatial levels—regional, national, international. Studies on urban innovation systems seek to explain how innovations emerge in an urban context, why urban regions differ in their innovative performance, and also address questions on the governance and management of such systems. Studies in this field draw from a variety of disciplines including economic geography, urban and regional economics, political sciences, innovation studies, social sciences, and urban planning.
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In foul decision-making by football referees, visual search is important for gathering task-specific information to determine whether a foul has occurred. Yet, little is known about the visual search behaviours underpinning excellent on-field decisions. The aim of this study was to examine the on-field visual search behaviour of elite and sub-elite football referees when calling a foul during a match. In doing so, we have also compared the accuracy and gaze behaviour for correct and incorrect calls. Elite and sub-elite referees (elite: N = 5, Mage ± SD = 29.8 ± 4.7yrs, Mexperience ± SD = 14.8 ± 3.7yrs; sub-elite: N = 9, Mage ± SD = 23.1 ± 1.6yrs, Mexperience ± SD = 8.4 ± 1.8yrs) officiated an actual football game while wearing a mobile eye-tracker, with on-field visual search behaviour compared between skill levels when calling a foul (Nelite = 66; Nsub−elite = 92). Results revealed that elite referees relied on a higher search rate (more fixations of shorter duration) compared to sub-elites, but with no differences in where they allocated their gaze, indicating that elites searched faster but did not necessarily direct gaze towards different locations. Correct decisions were associated with higher gaze entropy (i.e. less structure). In relying on more structured gaze patterns when making incorrect decisions, referees may fail to pick-up information specific to the foul situation. Referee development programmes might benefit by challenging the speed of information pickup but by avoiding pre-determined gaze patterns to improve the interpretation of fouls and increase the decision-making performance of referees.
