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The development and application of technologies such as robots and artificial intelligence drive a shift toward non-routinized, creative work. A stylized narrative is that a few regions dominate the making of these technologies and enjoy a virtuous cycle of increasing employment, innovativeness, and in-migration of the creative class. Regions merely applying these technologies may get into a vicious cycle of increasing unemployment, out-migration, and decreasing innovativeness. Following the normative governance turn in regional political economics, this theoretical policy paper pitches a framework of three complementary institutions to direct the technology-driven structural change for regional catching-up. Firstly, a system for innovation and entrepreneurial activity creates jobs by supporting exploitation of complementarities of application, co-development activities, and product innovation within mature and emerging sectors. Secondly, education provides creative and entrepreneurial skills to exploit technological opportunities and upskills workers for emerging sectors. Thirdly, labour market and social security institutions are to allow rationalization in mature sectors, incentivize hiring and learning on the job, as well as encourage innovative ventures, notably in emerging sectors. Challenges of implementation of the framework due to path-dependence, co-evolution, and multi-scalarity as well as applicability in different varieties of capitalism are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By combining arguments from regional economics and family business research, the aim of this article is to test the relationships among local export spillovers, management characteristics, and export propensity on a large sample of Spanish manufacturing firms over the 2003–2015 period. We find that family-managed firms, compared to their non-family counterparts, benefit more from being located in regions with a high density of exporters. Because of their firm-specific social capital and strong embeddedness in local networks, family-managed firms are better positioned to leverage the spatially bounded flow of knowledge and information in these regions, resulting in a higher likelihood to export than non-family firms. Additionally, our results show that the knowledge spillover effect is stronger for small and low-tech family firms' export propensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-Speed Rail (HSR) has experienced a rapid development in many countries in the world, but how can planners and decision makers better understand the regional economic impact of the gigantic system remains a challenge. This paper introduces a comprehensive framework to assess the regional economic impacts of HSR using China as an example. The regional economic impacts of HSR are evaluated under a dynamic and spatial computable general equilibrium-modelling framework. Such a framework provides a comprehensive assessment of the impacts in terms of both temporal and spatial variations. The assessment provides an ex post evaluation of the impacts based on the actual data reflecting the infrastructure development and operation in the period 2002-2013. The research findings confirm that HSR infrastructure development in China has generated a positive regional economic impact. The growth rate of the real GDP stimulated by rail infrastructure investment were found particularly substantial in the southwest, but relatively small in the developed eastern regions. Conversely, the real GDP level change was found to be relatively large in the developed regions, such as the south and the east. The disaggregated analysis shows that the contributions to regional economic growth are primarily derived from the productivity increase in rail transport sector and the stimulus effect of rail infrastructure capital investment. The research findings provide implications for future HSR development in both Europe and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the concept of the entrepreneurial university by examining roles of academic entrepreneurship departments in driving regional economic development outcomes. While a wealth of research investigates the role, activities and function of the entrepreneurial university, very little which focuses specifically on academic entrepreneurship departments, where much of the research, teaching and knowledge exchange concerning entrepreneurship takes place. Two case studies of large and active entrepreneurship departments are presented to illustrate the different roles and activities they undertake in the sphere of economic development in their regions or locales. A dual model of engagement is proposed, whereby the entrepreneurship department operates within the framework of the entrepreneurial university, but also as a regional actor in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, economic resilience has become a popular term in both theory and policy practice. This interest was triggered by the fact that some regional economies were extremely vulnerable, while others have managed to overcome, more or less effectively, the worse consequences of the current economic crisis. Within this context, questions arise regarding the role that policies at both the national and subnational levels can play in shaping regional economic resilience. Although high in the academic and political agenda, understanding the policy and governance aspects of resilience still remains a relatively underdeveloped area. The paper contributes to this debate focusing on an area which has been most severely hit by crises, the Region of West Macedonia, in Greece. The case study builds on the historical trajectory of the region in order to explain how different types of policies have influenced the ability of West Macedonia to respond to economic slumps and crises of the last 30 years. Evidence suggests that national protectionist policies largely explain not only resilience of the region against previous crises, but also its vulnerability towards the still ongoing economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of firms in the process of regional renewal and path development is a somewhat neglected area in the existing literature. With few exceptions, the literature is mainly concerned with aggregated development paths. To cover this gap, the current study turns its attention to cross-industry innovation capability (CIIC) building in firms and discusses how conditions for innovation and learning in a region drive this process. We introduce a new concept of CIIC – that is, the firm’s ability to transform knowledge and ideas from different industries into new products, processes and systems and/or its ability to adapt existing products, processes and systems to new industries – and identify its drivers and indicators. The discussion is supported by empirical studies of firms in three Norwegian case regions that undergo the restructuring process due to the recent severe decrease in oil prices. Our empirical data demonstrate that organizationally thick and diversified regions are more favourable for firms’ abilities to develop CIIC and cross-industry innovation activity. As a result, we emphasize that future regional policies should have a stronger focus on the linkages between internal firm characteristics and regional innovation systems to contribute to the firms’ absorptive capacity for developing cross-industry innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The literature on regional innovation systems (RISs) has grown impressively in the last two decades. The objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive assessment of all RIS articles published in scholarly journals between 1998 and 2015. It aims to inform researchers of the empirical results obtained so far and highlight areas that need further work. This review describes how the RIS field has developed, charts the current body of RIS research and discusses recommendations for moving the RIS field forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarly work has enhanced our understanding of how new path development activities are enabled or constrained by ‘regional environments’, made up of pre-existing industrial structures, knowledge organizations, support structures and institutional configurations. This paper moves beyond overly static views on regional environments. We develop a dynamic perspective by analysing conceptually and empirically how a constraining environment can be transformed into one that enables the development of new growth paths. The paper offers a typology of various modes of change, including layering, adaptation and novel application that are used by key actors to ‘manipulate’ the regional support structures to facilitate new regional industrial path development. The conceptual framework is applied to a case study of the digital games industry in the region of Scania, southern Sweden. Our findings suggest that the creation of a more enabling environment for the growth of the digital games industry has been the outcome of multi-scalar processes and combinations of various modes of change employed by a few key individuals operating in the newly emerging path. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The internationalization of production activities is having a profound impact on regional economies. In this regard, it is generating externalities not only in the countries where production is offshored, but also in the domestic networks in which the internationalizing firms are located. Therefore, this paper investigates the effects of outward foreign direct investment and offshore outsourcing activities on domestic supplier populations in industrial districts (IDs). The aim is to evaluate the ability of these systems to react to the structural shocks associated with internationalization strategies. The results show that local network resilience is generally higher in advanced forms of IDs, where the role of large firms or service activities is more relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to isolate the structural characteristics that affect the resilience of a regional economy. It focuses on the role played by related/unrelated variety and differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience and originally explores their interdependences. Italy is the empirical setting, and Italian local labour systems the unit of analysis. Regional resilience is measured as growth of the employment rate after the Great Recession that began in 2008. Results confirm the importance of related variety and of differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience. We found support of the creative capacity of culture argument, providing evidence that a moderate concentration in symbolic knowledge-based economic activities contributes to resilience. Synthetic and analytical knowledge-based activities provide positive and no support to regional resilience, respectively. Finally, the relatedness of the symbolic knowledge-based activities increases regional economic resilience. Some policy implications are then derived from these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the introduction of the related variety concept in 2007, a number of studies have been undertaken to analyse its effect on economic development. Our review of 21 studies makes clear that most studies find support for the initial hypothesis that related variety supports employment growth, though some studies suggest that the growth effects of related variety may be specific to knowledge-intensive sectors only. From the review, we list a number of further research questions regarding methodology, the role of unrelated variety, different forms of relatedness and the effect of related variety on knowledge production and entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of recent advancements regarding regional innovation policy rationales and evidence, there are few analyses about the actual features of existing regional innovation policies. Nevertheless, a policy analysis perspective is important in order to recognize their distinctive patterns across regions, and to understand how rationales and evidence can be translated into policy-making. To this purpose, this paper develops a framework to study the extent to which regional innovation policies have changed during the past few years. Since the mid-2000s, there has been an important development of innovation policy rationales, advocating for more specialization; likewise, greater data availability at the regional level has allowed more sophisticated assessment of innovation performance. Finally, the crisis since 2008 has had ravaging effects in some regions, with job losses and severe economic sluggishness. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect transforming dynamics in regional innovation policies. Against this backdrop, the paper compares the institutional frameworks and budgetary priorities of four Spanish regions during the period 2001–2014: Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia. In so doing, it aims at studying the extent to which regional governments have readily addressed past and new challenges related to their regional innovation system, and if so, how. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Territorial capital has gained considerable attention in the past few years. The aim with this work is to throw light on some underlying aspects of territorial capital research. The study focuses on the theoretical and empirical issues of territorial capital and highlights some critical remarks related to the topic. On the one hand, the focus of the study is on the comparison of concepts and approaches in connection with territorial capital; then an in-depth look is taken at “capital frameworks” related to the research field. On the other hand, a comprehensive overview is presented of empirical investigations by comparing the applied methods, dimensions and variables of territorial capital. An argument is also made for a critical assessment concerning the topic with regard to the sense and function of territorial capital in regional economics and local economic development and highlights some further dilemmas concerning the “properties of capital” and “territorial capital paradigm”. Finally, some suggestions are provided for the future of territorial capital analysis. The main result of the study is an own belief in the concept of territorial capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift from the linear to the innovation system-based approach has resulted in the emergence of differentiated regional innovation policy. However, certain common presumptions bind these location-specific policies together. The set of information that is used to design these policies and the set of information excluded are fairly similar. The theoretical sections of this paper provide a critical review on the informational basis of regional innovation policy by contrasting the interpretations of the welfare effects of technological change in the utilitarian tradition and in Sen's capability approach. The empirical sections analyse the correspondence of the innovation capacity and welfare (well-being) situation in a Hungarian micro-regional data set. We conclude that the conventional informational basis of innovation policy is too narrow from a welfare perspective. Not only should the differences in the innovation systems, but also the peculiarities of the region's welfare situation be considered during the design of innovation policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sheds light on the relationship and tension between competitiveness and cohesion as undercurrents and continuous causes of controversies in the regional innovation policy. The in-built problems in regional innovation policy that emerge because this policy is essentially a synthesis of different policies with different rationales are contemplated. Empirically, this article outlines the main phases of evolution and drivers of development in the Finnish regional innovation policy. It also discusses the recent developments from the perspective of regional (and national) competitiveness and cohesion nexus. These empirical outlines are then used to feed the views back into the discussion on a more theoretical level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The design of regional policy tools for supporting economic development in the knowledge economy requires an understanding of the links between extra- and intra-regional knowledge interactions. In this paper, we argue that policymakers must shift from focusing primarily on the development of regionalized relationships and institutions, in which knowledge is “embedded”, to a more outward looking approach. We develop the idea of knowledge anchoring which refers to the many ways in which firms (and other actors) incorporate new knowledge into regional economies through interactions and relations that include actors who are located close by as well as at a distance. In this way, knowledge may be “anchored” territorially because it has become part of the routines and activities of many firms in a particular region. Whilst individual firms are concerned to access extra-regional knowledge and secure it within their own organizations, policymakers are concerned with wider knowledge anchoring to tie knowledge into a regional economy. The paper explores the ways in which existing regional policy supports extra-regional knowledge interactions and the subsequent recirculation of knowledge. We suggest that the key features of knowledge anchoring as a policy concept are that it is flexible with regard to the nature and scale of knowledge interactions, and that it focuses on the linking of extra- and intra-regional relations via the combination and “stretching-out” of knowledge interactions across time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses an article on regional policies that support regional economies, territorial knowledge dynamics (TKD), and regional development.

Within the literature on innovation systems, there are a growing number of scholars emphasizing the importance of differentiated knowledge bases underlying innovation activities. The existing work on knowledge bases is largely grounded on in-depth case studies; while surprisingly little effort has been done so far to operationalize the concept in a more systematic manner. In this article, an attempt is made to develop a scheme of analysis to identify the knowledge base of a regional economy. We suggest using occupation data in association with a location quotient analysis, to assess whether a regional economy has a particular strength in one (or more) knowledge bases. To bring the analytical scheme into practice and assess it, we apply it on the county level in Sweden. The results are explained and contrasted with insights into the regional economies taken from secondary sources. We conclude that the proposed scheme of analysis leads to fairly reliable results, and could stimulate further empirical research on differentiated knowledge bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After outlining the overall scale and evolution of European Union (EU) public expenditure, this paper examines the mechanisms driving the allocation of Cohesion Policy resources. The analysis reveals the extent to which the outcome of the policy's principle- and formula-driven allocation mechanisms is modified by precedent and politico-economic considerations. In particular it shows that the consequent per capita final financial allocations (the intensity of aid) are greatest not for the poorest areas: up to 84% of EU GDP per head, aid increases as income increases. The analysis also emphasizes the on–off nature of the EU policy. In the light of these results a series of simulations are carried out. Attention is given first to a more economically sensitive treatment of transition regions, whose relative growth results in shifts from one category to another and to a mechanism capable of providing differentiated support to all disadvantaged regional economies. Attention is then given to ways of ensuring that final allocations are inversely proportional to income, and that most aid is concentrated on the most disadvantaged areas (Section 5). In the conclusions attention is paid to guidelines which might apply to the reform of the EU Cohesion Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since Paul David first published his economic histories of path-dependent innovation, the subject has exerted fascination upon scholars of innovation and technological change and, latterly, regional scientists and economic geographers. This paper speaks of the third and fourth of these communities in the main, though it may have theoretical and empirical elements of interest to the first two as well. It begins with an overview of recent perspectives and critiques concerning the relevance of the path dependence concept to the understanding of regional economic development and its associated governance. It then goes on to discuss the contribution of evolutionary economic geography to thinking about “branching” from path dependence and the creation of new paths. Evidence for key generic spatial processes of path transition is provided before the main content of the paper concludes with new insights into the contributions of regional innovation policy to path evolution. Conclusions are then drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies why some clusters in a certain region are more dynamic than others, even though they all operate within the same basic innovative regional environment. We first established which variables were to be used to measure the dynamics of a regional cluster. We included both inputs and outputs of the innovative regional environment and also cluster development-related variables. We then applied this to two clusters located in the Valencian Region, Spain. The first cluster is involved in the footwear industry, while the other is involved in the ceramic tile industry. The evolution of the variables which had an influence on their dynamics was studied to determine which variables had similar behaviours and how their evolution was related to the clusters' life cycle and to the evolution of regional income. The results show that regional innovation impacts on clusters’ productivity and that when clusters lose their dynamism, employment, sales and exports are the most affected variables. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Increasing globalization, if properly exploited, can provide interesting opportunities for regional economies. Nevertheless, when they are not managed with a far-sighted approach, regions, and particularly those at an intermediate level of development, can lose their comparative advantages compared with regions of developing countries. Innovation is the main instrument for improving and ensuring competitiveness to enterprises and growth opportunities to local economies. The aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of public policies in reinforcing regional innovation systems and the role of regional innovation agencies. With this in mind, we describe the policies implemented by the “Regional Agency for Technology and Innovation” of Apulia, a region in Southern Italy, highlighting its main strengths and weaknesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the 1990s cultural and creative industries have generated increasing attention in academic, public and political discourse. Nowadays, these industries are seen to be important factors of regional development. Because an urban environment offers a special quality of place, which is stimulating, motivating, challenging and inspiring for creative people, cultural and creative industries are spatially highly concentrated in the major cities of each country. Furthermore, urban places have an advantage compared to more peripheral or rural regions by offering the creative talents particular surroundings with openness, diversity, tolerance and internationality to realize their individual life styles. Overall, it can be assumed, that the cultural and creative industries fulfil their role as engines of innovation, growth and increasing employment rates predominantly in major cities. The empirical analysis of regional employment shifts in the cultural and creative industries in Germany shows that the main hubs of the cultural and creative industries in Germany generated above-average growth rates between 2003 and 2008. The more rural regions declined in most cases against the overall employment growth of the cultural and creative industries in Germany by 5.0%. Hence, the peripheral regions afar from the urban cores could not benefit from the growth of cultural and creative industries. Furthermore, a shift analysis shows the importance of locational effects in explaining the regional employment dynamics in these industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1980s, public bodies became aware of the importance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in regional economic development. In order to stimulate their innovativeness and to overcome their inward limits, public policies set up innovation agencies all over European countries. Criticisms arose after 10 years of existence because of their low usefulness. This article aims to develop a better understanding of the relationship between SMEs and innovation agencies. It presents the implementation of a management scheme which experimented with new solutions in French SMEs, to overcome previous gaps. Our article seeks to enrich research exploring the links between the SME and the innovation agencies within knowledge-based clusters. It advocates new principles to improve SMEs' guidance in innovation processes and shows that they are still essential organizations to support SMEs' innovativeness, especially the structurally weak and inward-looking looking ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that no single formula exists for how universities can stimulate innovation activity and industrial development in a particular region. The type of university-industry cooperation must be fined-tuned according to the knowledge base of the university and to the dominant mode of innovation in the regional industry. This article discusses two different modes of innovation: science, technology, innovation (STI) and doing, using, interacting (DUI). The unit of analysis is innovation and cooperation with universities in two regional industries in Norway, which are dominated by the two modes of innovation: STI (marine biotechnology in Tromsø) and DUI (oil and gas equipment suppliers in Agder). The empirical analyses demonstrate the different roles that universities play in these two regional industries. The University of Tromsø is the main organization behind the development of the marine biotechnology industry in Tromsø and is an important knowledge node and source of biotechnology spin-offs. Equipment suppliers in Agder have become world leaders in some niches, almost without research cooperation with universities. A general lesson is that the dominant mode of innovation in a regional industry makes a difference to the role universities can play in stimulating the development of the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the stability and change of regional economic activities in the long run. As the unit of analysis, we selected the machine tool industry in West Germany for the years 1953-2002. We spot a strong variance in the activities between different regions. These differences are relatively stable over time, and the regional activities are rather path-dependent. Nevertheless, the paper also identifies changes in the level of activities. As the main driving factors for these developments, we examine the effect of changing regional degrees of diversification over time. We find that those regions which generally broaden their scope of activities have a higher likelihood to grow than regions which are specializing. Furthermore, diversification into totally new technological and product fields is only beneficial under specific circumstances based on technological and market developments. Hence, in most cases, a broad diversification is superior to one focusing on new state-of-the-art technological fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A brief characterization of the cultural economy of landscape is provided, with special reference to the English Lake District. The early growth of tourism in the Lake District in relation to its natural, literary and artistic assets is described. I examine the cultural economy of landscape in relation to three critical social groups, namely, local producers of goods and services, residents and visitors/tourists. I then offer a detailed account of the main elements of the Lake District's cultural economy and the tourist experience today. Attention is devoted to (a) the natural environment and its attractions, (b) the historical-artistic patrimony of the region and (c) the growing importance of food production, cuisine and crafts within the regional economy. I show how these elements of the cultural economy combine with a complex institutional milieu to generate a path-dependent trajectory of development. In the conclusion, I present a few remarks on the concept of creative regions and the senses in which peripheral areas like the Lake District might and might not be analysed in terms of this concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a stylized, supply-side model to estimate the permanent effects of the Community Support Framework (CSF) programmes on a regional economy and use it to estimate the impact of the 1994-1999 and 2000-2006 CSF programmes on the Spanish region of Galicia. The evolution of the economy is simulated under two scenarios, with and without CSF funds, studying the contribution of the European regional policy to the output, employment and different categories of capital. Our results suggest that the contribution of the Structural Funds to the growth of the Galician economy is remarkable and that the impacts of the European programmes extend well beyond the end of the aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural resources are today the object of considerable attention in regional economics. Ground for new forms of innovation these resources have given rise to numerous works aiming at understanding the emergence and organisation of culture based economic activities and at identifying the role of these activities in regional development and urban planning. The objective of this article is to explore the way in which resources, and in particular cultural resources, are incorporated into production processes on the one hand, and the consequences on the resources of doing so on the other hand. Becoming an economic resource, a cultural “object” (symbol, image, cultural heritage, traditional know-how, etc.) becomes embedded within commercial relationships. The question we address here is what are the causes and consequences of this commodification of culture for the production systems, the customers and for the local communities which put a certain number of their constitutive elements into play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new model of knowledge-based regional economic development was invented in Boston during the 1930s and subsequently transferred to northern California where it also had independent roots. Drawing upon academic, business and government resources and configuring them in new formats created new firms and new industries. Nevertheless, the two regions often appear dissimilar when they are contrasted synchronically, due to the different stages they may be in at the time. Thus, some observers argue that Boston and Silicon Valley are distinctive watersheds, irrelevant to follow-on regions. However, if the development process of these two prototypical high-tech regions are analysed diachronically, a trajectory with similar phases of development may be identified. We suggest that these two regions exemplify a general model for high-tech regional growth and renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of state played in the regional innovation systems through state universities and legal and institutional set-up within Turkey. Initially, the paper will discuss the lack of regional perspective in policy-making that, until very recently, was predominant in Turkey. Secondly, the paper examines two salient laws that have ramifications for regional economics. The key elements in regional innovation systems can be split apart into two sections. On one side there are technology development regions/centres, and university-industry joint research centres. On the other side, taking into account the public research undertaken, there are the state universities, and the role that they play in the earlier mentioned centres/regions. The econometric analysis asserts that each of these elements has a positive and statistically significant effect on the patenting performance of regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we test the creativity and diversity hypothesis of Richard Florida for European regions. Florida argues that the level of regional economic development depends on the levels of technology, talent, and tolerance that regions harbour. Tolerance, in this case, is a measure for diversity of lifestyles, the creativity that results from it and population's openness towards non-traditional lifestyles. Using data for 94 European regions we investigate whether differences in creativity and diversity are a good predictor of differences in regional wealth in additive and multiplicative regression models. The results indicate that regional differences in diversity are directly related to differences in regional wealth. Moreover, we find that the synergetic effect of technology and talent on the level of regional wealth depends on the degree of diversity that resides within regions. Our findings support the idea that creativity and diversity deserve a more prominent place in economic geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s, the south-eastern part of North-Brabant (also known as the Greater Eindhoven region) in the Netherlands has enjoyed a major turn in its economic position and outlook. From a more or less traditional industrial region in decline, it has become a “cradle of innovation” with a key position in the wider “knowledge-based” economy. This paper sheds light on this transformation by referring to the recent literature on territoriality and relationality, and how it has informed post-Marshallian accounts of clustering. In particular, we discuss the context and scope for regional strategy-making in light of selectivities stemming from state and firm activities. The success of the Eindhoven region cannot be understood without seeing how it was structurally privileged by agents and processes largely external to the region. Part of its success, however, can be attributed to strategic action undertaken within the region itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the Knowledge-based Economy spatial distribution across the European Union (EU) regions (NUTS II), linking recent research approaches on innovation and structural change with approaches to regional economics. As a means of conducting this research, we classify economic activities according to six sectors based on their knowledge/technology intensity. Our results show that the higher the knowledge/technology content of the economic activity, the higher the concentration level of the activity. We find that some service activities (those considered knowledge intensive) have similar concentration levels to those operating in high or medium tech manufacturing. With regard to specialization, the most outstanding result is the strong presence of high and medium knowledge intensive service activities in metropolitan/capital regions. In general, our results reinforce the notion that an oligocentric model persists in Europe, with the southern German regions leading high and medium tech manufacturing, the south-east of England leading in high knowledge-intensive services, and with the mid-core model exemplified by the European metropolitan archipelago (particularly capital cities) in both northern and southern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Clusters" have become central to European regional economic development policy. However, concerns have emerged over the content and quality of delivery of cluster-based initiatives. Here we review the implementation of English cluster policy, with a focus on medical technologies in the West Midlands region of the UK. Using a policy streams framework, we seek rapprochement between counter arguments that implementation difficulties are the inevitable results of applying a "fuzzy" concept or are avoidable outcomes of organizational deficiencies. We illustrate how both can contribute to failure at different policy stages and suggest that before adopting a cluster approach more consideration should be given to the institutional capacity required for implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the emergence of university-industry partnerships in the motor sports industry cluster located in the Charlotte region of North Carolina, USA. Despite little industry demand for the local engagement, the universities and community colleges started to approach the industry in the late 1990s and recently several new programmes of motor sports-related research and education have been initiated. During the past 3 years, the regional and state governments have also started to play a role in building up support for the motor sports industry. This process has largely been influenced by the ideas of knowledge economy and innovation as an interactive process, by the ideas of the wider social and economic role of universities, and by increase awareness of the relevance of the motor sports industry for the regional economy. Charlotte's motor sports industry is an interesting example of how a previously rather craft-based industry transforms into one in which technology, innovation and creativity play a key role in firm performance. However, the strategy for building up regional capabilities and relationships necessary to support the increased technological intensity of the industry has been slow to develop. This paper addresses the important question of how the universities together with other research and educational organizations can build collaboration with an industry that has traditionally prospered in the region without any links to them, but which in the face of technological challenges needs to reach out to access cutting-edge knowledge and highly qualified personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work in regional development has stressed the role of key economic actors in less favoured regions, particularly in high-technology sectors, in making those regions more attractive to outside investors. Of course, in less favoured regions (LFRs), there are rarely strong high-technology sectors able to reconfigure their local environment and provide the necessary local "buzz" to attract the attention of outside investors. In this paper, this issue is addressed by looking at how universities can play this role and have a broader systemic effect on the regional economic environment, by plugging gaps in the local regional innovation system. In this paper, a case study from Newcastle in the north-east of England is taken to consider recent developments which have begun to rebuild the regional innovation system. Focusing on the commercialization community around the university, it is looked at how this community of geographically proximate but initially organizationally and cognately remote actors built a common understanding to solve the problems involved in exploiting intellectual property in the impoverished regional innovation system (RIS) of the north-east of England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become clear that the idea of regional learning is an inadequate way of evolving regional economic development because of numerous problems of composition or utilizing samples of one, learning legacies and delays and impossibility of repeat experience. So, perforce, to offset regional imbalances responsible agencies are having to explore solutions endogenously in greater measure. This means constructing regional advantage, not an easy thing to do, by integrating and exploiting a range of assets from economic strengths to knowledge assets, good governance and creativity. Of great importance in this is seeking to promote “related variety” among economic activities. Single innovations diffuse swiftly across technology “platforms” into related industries because absorptive capacity is high among them. The key trick in constructing regional advantage is designing appropriate policy platforms that mix variable policy instruments in an integrated and judicious manner. This paper maps out a theoretical approach enabling this to be accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we contribute to the longstanding discussion on the role of knowledge to economic growth in a spatial context. We observe that in adopting the European policy strategy towards a competitive knowledge economy, the Netherlands is—as most European countries—mainly oriented towards industrial, technological factors. The policy focus is on R&D specialized regions in their spatial economic strategies. We place the knowledge economy in a broader perspective. Based on the knowledge economy literature, we value complementary indicators: the successful introduction of new products and services to the market (“innovation”) and indicators of skills of employees (“knowledge workers”). Using econometric analysis, we relate the three factors “R&D”, “innovation” and “knowledge workers” to regional economic growth. We conclude that the factors “innovation” and “knowledge workers” are more profoundly related to urban employment and productivity growth than the R&D-factor. Preferably, urban research and policy-makers should therefore take all three knowledge factors into account when determining economic potentials of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate how regional advantages and firms characteristics influence the location of R&D. Looking at 2024 decisions of R&D lab locations in France, an extended conditional logit is implemented with spatially lagged explanatory variables to evaluate the importance of each factor and to test the spatial dimension of knowledge spillovers. The results indicate that a large market size, a large amount of ideas, and a low level of competition in the target region increases the probability of setting up R&D labs while the diffusion of knowledge across regions induces a significant spatial dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical concepts of industrial district and regional innovation system though closely related, capture different aspects of regional economic development. Given the “nestedness” of a system in other systems, one regional innovation system can support several districts. However, in some cases, districts may be considered as local innovation systems with independent innovation patterns. In fact, the socio-economic characters of industrial districts can be so specific that the region's size and institutional framework may be inadequate in fully describing their innovation processes. In the case of the Italian region of Lombardy, this “autonomous” local innovation system model proliferates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-depth case studies of new manufacturing plants are used to motivate a new business location model that incorporates management practices and cultures as location factors. This model is tested using US data on the location of new manufacturing plants. It is found that plants that adopt high performance management practices and cultures rely on different criteria when making their location decisions from those plants that are managed in more traditional ways. Omitting management culture from studies of business location may result in biased estimates of the importance of various traditional location factors. By demonstrating that location decisions are differentiated according to the management practices of firms, it is argued that regional development planning should pay more attention to specific business characteristics and that regional development policy include programmes that strengthen complementarities between management practices and the regional economic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, new regionally based strategy-building processes emerged at the interface between public policy and the social coordination of collective action. Foresight as a governance process to stimulate regional innovation and strengthen the regional economic system against global competition became a popular concept. Based on the experiences of a strategy-building process in the Italian autonomous province of Trento, it is the objective of this paper to sketch recent theoretical and political developments regarding multi-actor and multi-level governance and policy concepts at the regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years regional policy has become more and more concerned with the improvement of the innovation capacity and performance of firms. Many regional development strategies have as key elements the support of their regional innovation systems and innovative clusters of firms. It has been recognized that increasing the technological level, the value added and the competitiveness of a regional economy relies to a large extent on the innovation capacity of regional firms and clusters. Regional development is an important policy issue also for the European Union (EU). The EU Structural Funds aim at supporting regions lagging behind in their development or facing structural problems. In this paper how the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) affects innovation in the Austrian Objective 1 region Burgenland is analysed. In this case study data from an innovation survey conducted in the context of the recent mid-term evaluation are used in order to assess the innovation-related effects of the ERDF. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the ERDF does not target the problems and needs of regional firms regarding innovation in a satisfactory way which also hampers the successful restructuring of the regional economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Industrial Revolution the cyclical processes of rise and fall of regional economies have been accelerating. Many of the specific problems of the falling part of clustering, that is old industrial areas, are related to path dependency and lock-ins. Particularly political lock-ins hinder the necessary restructuring processes in old industrial areas. They can be considered as thick institutional tissues aiming at preserving existing industrial structures and therefore unnecessarily slowing down industrial restructuring and indirectly hampering the development of indigenous potential and creativity. Of the recently born offspring of the family of territorial innovation models, the learning region concept seems to be most focused on overcoming and avoiding political lock-ins in old industrial areas. Most scholars consider learning regions as regional development concepts in which the main actors are strongly, but flexibly, connected with each other and are open both to intraregional and interregional learning processes. Policy-makers in learning regions are involved in learning from institutional errors made in the past and by doing that in avoiding path-dependent development. Empirical evidence, however, shows that the learning region is of limited importance to unlock regional economies from path dependency, due to three weaknesses: its fuzziness, its normative character in its squeezed position between national innovation systems and global production networks. A less normative and more process-oriented concept is proposed in this paper, namely that of the learning cluster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is great interest in the new knowledge economy, less favoured regions seem permanently disadvantaged because they lack a critical mass of knowledge capital to initiate accumulation, growth and economic development processes. This is a problem for policy-makers seeking to promote economic growth and territorial cohesion in such regions. Despite this, examples from two such regions, Newcastle, UK and Twente, the Netherlands, suggests that such companies can be very successful. This paper seeks to develop a conceptual model of how university spin-off companies (USOs) can improve their regional economies. The economic benefits that such companies bring are explored, to identify those elements which can potentially upgrade regional economies through knowledge accumulation, which are termed ‘building up territorial knowledge pools’. This paper concludes by developing a conceptual framework for the operation of the territorial knowledge pool; highlighting four different roles played by USOs in improving regional innovation environments and considering the conceptual and policy implications raised by the framework model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines how regional development policy in New Zealand has attempted to reshape the organizational and institutional foundations of regional growth and innovation since the government initiated the implementation of growth and innovation-focused policies in 2000. Dealing with the governance and the economic dimension, the paper elaborates on the challenges encountered in different regional environments that range from metropolitan areas to remote rural regions. The paper outlines New Zealand's institutional and economic framework and the set of programmes used to foster regional development and innovation. Principal lessons from New Zealand's experience are the importance of the institutional set-up in regions, the need to tailor initiatives to different regional contexts, and insights into the complex relationship between regional development and regional innovation policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research organizations within enterprises and universities are part of a (regional) innovation system (RIS). An important question concerns the nature of the relation between an RIS and regional economic growth. To be more specific: how to organize the transfer of information and knowledge? How is this related to embeddedness? Networks are organizational configurations that perform two functions: co-ordination and transmission. Both are important for the generation and transfer of knowledge. Networks consist of 'nodes', 'connections' and 'intensities of transfer'. Firms can be conceived of as 'nodes' consisting of 'bundles' of functions, forms of organizations, and technologies. Different parts of firms can participate differently in different networks. The transfer of knowledge is only one aspect of the functioning of firms and networks. Relations between firms are not static; 'embedded relational dynamics' would be a better description. The changing 'selection environment' requires the continuous adjustment of 'nodes', which in turn influence the connections and the intensities. Networks develop as 'emergent and embedded structures' with new varieties of innovation. Planning is an exception. Competition, the heterogeneous distribution of knowledge, and the diffusion of innovation are the prime movers of relations, resulting in economic growth. The structure of a network and its dynamics influence the diffusion of innovation. The precise nature of the transfer of information and knowledge also depends on the technology trajectory, the stage of a particular technological development path, and the nature of embeddedness. Universities can be important 'nodes' in the emerging innovation networks, in particular as 'producers' of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a critical exploration of the issues raised by the attempt to integrate aims and concerns derived from one European Union (EU) policy domain into another. It does this via an examination of the ways in which the European Employment Strategy (EES) has been taken into account in the design and initial implementation of Structural Fund program in the 2000–2006 round. In particular, it examines the nature of this ‘mainstreaming’ relationship in terms of the structures and mechanisms associated with current Objective 1 program operating in the UK. It maps out the vertical and horizontal linkages between European, national and regional levels, and assesses the extent to which strategic frameworks, program guidance and program content have successfully integrated EES considerations. The article concludes by identifying some implications for theories of European governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the phenomenon of industry clustering in Australia. It includes an overview of the factors that have shaped the historic and recent developments of clusters in Australia. Two philosophical approaches to clustering based on a whole of industry approach and regional facilitation are discussed. Four case studies are presented on the Australian wine industry, the Far North Queensland, North Adelaide and Hunter region clustering initiatives. The case studies represent different approaches to regional industry clustering in Australia. The conclusion to the article discusses future prospects for using clustering as a tool to foster regional economic development in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]