Urban Economic Resilience, Regional Innovation Synergy: Complementary Advantages, Productivity, and Sustainable Development

Dear Colleagues,

Urban and regional economies are increasingly challenged by global uncertainties, technological disruptions, and environmental constraints, underscoring the urgency of strengthening economic resilience while advancing sustainable development. Economic resilience—defined as a region’s capacity to absorb shocks, adapt to changes, and transform through innovation—cannot be achieved in isolation; it depends on effective collaboration across regions, leveraging complementary advantages in industries and innovation to enhance productivity and shared prosperity.

This Special Issue aims to explore the multifaceted connections between urban economic resilience, regional innovation synergy, and sustainable development, with a focus on how complementary advantages drive productivity growth and resilience building.

The interplay between urban economic resilience and regional innovation systems, with specific attention to how industrial complementary advantages and innovation complementary advantages jointly enhance productivity and resilience.

We welcome original research and reviews covering, but not limited to, the following:

• Theoretical frameworks for regional innovation synergy and economic resilience;
• Case studies of cross-regional collaboration that achieve productivity gains through complementary advantages;
• Mechanisms of knowledge spillovers, talent mobility, and technology diffusion in resilient regional systems;
• Policy tools for fostering interregional linkages, balancing specialization and diversification, and mitigating inequality in synergy-driven development;
• Quantitative analysis of productivity changes resulting from industrial and innovation complementarity.

To consolidate cutting-edge research on how regional collaboration—through leveraging complementary strengths—can build more resilient, productive, and sustainable urban and regional economies, providing a theoretical basis and practical guidance for policymakers and planners.

Existing literature has made significant strides in understanding economic resilience and regional innovation. However, two critical gaps remain:

First, most studies treat resilience and innovation as separate domains, neglecting their reciprocal influence—how innovation synergy enhances resilience, and how resilience creates a stable environment for sustained innovation.

Second, research on "complementarity" often focuses on either industrial or innovation dimensions in isolation, with limited attention to how their integration drives productivity and resilience.

This Special Issue addresses these gaps by integrating resilience theory with innovation studies, and by examining industrial and innovation complementarity as a unified driver of sustainable development. It will serve as a bridge between macro-level resilience frameworks and micro-level innovation dynamics, offering a holistic perspective missing in current scholarship.

The scope spans multiple dimensions:

(1) mechanisms of regional innovation synergy, e.g., knowledge spillovers, collaborative R&D, and talent mobility;

(2) industrial complementary advantages, e.g., specialization division, supply chain integration, and comparative advantage utilization;

(3) quantitative and qualitative analysis of productivity gains from synergy;

(4) policy design for resilient, inclusive, and sustainable regional development.

The purpose is to integrate interdisciplinary research to develop actionable strategies for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars, bridging the gap between theoretical resilience frameworks and practical synergy-building.

This issue supplements existing literature by addressing critical gaps: while prior studies often examine economic resilience in isolation from regional innovation systems, or focus on innovation without linking it to resilience-building, this Special Issue foregrounds their reciprocal relationship. It also advances understanding of "complementarity" as a key mediator—how industrial and innovation advantages, when coordinated across regions, can amplify productivity gains and resilience beyond what single regions achieve independently.

Prof. Dr. Tao Ma
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• regional economic resilience
• regional innovation synergy
• industrial complementary advantages
• innovation complementarity
• productivity enhancement
• sustainable regional development
• cross-regional collaboration
• urban-rural linkage
• knowledge spillovers
• adaptive governance