Paper short abstract:

Ecuador has made global headlines for prominent sustainable innovation projects. Yet while news reports hail its creating an Andean Silicon Valley and forging new South-South relations, its projects face growing criticism, including by youth networks developing multi-disciplinary maker and startup ecologies.

Paper long abstract:

Over the past decade, Ecuador has made international headlines as the site of a series of prominent sustainable innovation experiments and large-scale technology projects that promised to establish new pathways towards a 21st century knowledge economy. From the launch of new, rurally-based technology and research-focused universities, to the development of the Yachay City of Knowledge initiative - whose name in Quechua means knowledge- the nation's government has mounted a series of initiatives aiming to transform regional infrastructure, develop national human capital, and draw in new partners from global innovation sectors. All this to supposedly benefit of a new generation of knowledge workers. Yet while international news reports hailed the Andean state for developing a new rival to Silicon Valley, and deepening relations with Asian states to bolster new South-South alliances, locally, such projects have faced growing criticism for replicating global hierarchies. In the midst of such developments, urban youth networks in Ecuador have worked to develop multi-disciplinary maker spaces and start-up incubator ecologies pressing for alternatives to state-promoted sustainable innovation models that many argue exclude the very populations they claimed to best represent. This paper thus focuses on the rapid growth of such networks as novel spaces from which models for political innovation and policy proto-typing can emerge. While state-based innovation policies continue to underscore the need to import foreign expertise to foster competitive knowledge economies, start up spaces have pressed forth their own models that, in distinction to state-sponsored programs, highlight the vibrancy of local creativity around sustainable innovation.