Introduction: The ambition of this book

In 2011, the South Australian [SA] Government enlisted the services of Professor Göran Roos as Adelaide Thinker in Residence to examine the innovation challenges faced by the manufacturing sector. Professor Roos's brief was to work with a group of ten small- to medium-sized manufacturing firms and two government departments to guide the participants through a process that would actively engage them in business model innovation. At the time, a group of researchers were also engaged to work with the firms and government agencies to help document specific aspects and challenges confronted by the firm's leaders and managers and the government agencies that seek to facilitate regional transformation and transition.

Professor Roos's residency inspired this book and, with the support of the University of Adelaide Press, we issued a call for South Australian research that would not only demonstrate the drivers and processes of innovation but also illustrate the interdependencies of innovation across multiple levels, ranging from the individuals with innovation ideas and ambitions through to government support agencies that create the supporting context and infrastructure for innovation.

Although the manufacturing sector provided the setting for Professor Roos's work, for contributions to this book we loosened this constraint. We purposefully invited open submissions for research that dealt with innovation and correspondingly entrepreneurship from any perspective as long as it was original research based in South Australia which offered insight on the idea of integrating innovation through entrepreneurship strategies and systems. We welcomed articles that addressed relevant and related subjects pertinent to the South Australian innovation system. As a result we attracted articles dealing with both innovation and entrepreneurship that varied from not-for-profit firms with social missions to the research and development division of a pharmaceutical company; from public infrastructures such as education and intellectual property patenting systems to private infrastructures of Enterprise Resource Planning systems.

The book itself is designed as a seed for an innovative idea and its editors held three ambitions for the work. The first was to draw together initially South Australian research and researchers (later we wish to expand this collective) who are actively engaged in creating and contributing to new knowledge about innovation by adopting a systems view of entrepreneurship.