This research examines the geography of policy innovation at the provincial, city and regency scales as a result of decentralization in Indonesia. We seek to discover the content of urban and economic development policy innovation, focusing on where policy developments are drawn from or travel to and how they travel. In the era of decentralization following the Suharto New Order regime (1966–1998), the vast archipelago of Indonesia represents something of a laboratory in which there are numerous local experiments in urban and economic development policy innovation. A variety of cities, regencies and provinces have emerged in the national media and in audits and rankings (by the likes of KPPOD and World Bank) as ‘models’ of good governance, local economic development and urban infrastructure policy and practice. Some such as Batam owe much of their success to selective central government policies of the Suharto era but many others have emerged since the introduction of decentralization laws as a product of local initiative (for example, Solo) to be coveted by central government in Jakarta and by local governments in Indonesia and abroad.