Introduction

The academic narrative mainly discards the periphery and innovation nexus as exceptional cases. We push to start an academic conversation on a more systematic understanding of key drivers and challenges organizations—specifically local firms—face in peripheral areas as they strive to innovate and compete globally. We build upon but push forward the traditional geography lenses toward a strategy-led research approach to analyze the enabling conditions for peripheral locations from an economic, managerial, and strategic perspective. While the availability of traditional local advantages is still a critical condition for success, recent academic and public debate has also revealed the possibility of challenging the traditional paradigm of centers versus peripheries, including de-globalization or, at least, a new regionalization (or glocalization) of value chains, especially for the modern knowledge-based economy.