The knowledge-based development agenda:a perspective for 2010-2020

Purpose - In the context of today's knowledge economy, development policies that are mainly based on knowledge as a primary source of wealth and added-value are increasingly adopted by cities and countries. This tendency is becoming much more common due to the global financial crisis. Thus, the knowledge-based development field has been in a state of important progress during the last decade. This paper seeks to discuss and highlight the major issues of knowledge-based development. By doing so the paper aims to present an agenda for future research directions for the present decade of 2010-2020.Design methodology approach - The paper presents an agenda for future research by co-instantaneously presenting the status in relation to the major pending issues of the knowledge-based development field. This is accomplished through a wide-scope literature review and qualitative scoring of knowledge-based development (KBD) categories.Findings - The main finding is that research is needed in four main directions: development of holistic and unified approaches for the practical formulation of citizen-centric knowledge-based development strategies; knowledge-based urban planning; knowledge-based development assessment and metrics; practical aspects of implementation of knowledge-based development approaches.Research limitations implications - Research in the paper is based on a wide literature review of the most important and added-value available resources in the KBD field and in qualitative scoring of research categories. Use of empirical components such as citation analysis, field surveys, knowledge network analysis as well as for a specific approach regarding the scoring system would be needed in future research.Originality value - The discussion and issues presented in the paper should be of value not only to researchers and practitioners but also to cities and countries willing to design efficient and effective knowledge-based development strategies.