Regional innovation systems: Current discourse and unresolved issues
Introduction
The increasing popularity of the concept of regional innovation systems has been driven in part by greater international competition in a rapidly globalizing economy, as well as the apparent shortcomings of traditional regional development models and policies, and the emergence of successful clusters of firms and industries in many regions around the world [1]. One result has been the rediscovery, by many academics, of the importance of regional scale and of specific and regional resources in stimulating the innovation capability and competitiveness of firms and regions [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. Thus, it is argued that firm-specific competencies and learning processes can lead to regional competitive advantages if they are based on localized capabilities such as specialized resources, skills, institutions and share of common social and cultural values [7]. In other words, regional development ensues as competitiveness occurs in places where localized capabilities such as institutional endowment, built structures, knowledge, and skills exist. The literature on regional innovation systems provides substantial description and analyses of relationships between innovation, learning and the economic performance of particular regions.
Attempts to explain social and institutional conditions of regional competitiveness have also resulted in the emergence of such concepts as ‘learning region’ [8], [9], ‘innovative milieu’ [10], [11], ‘industrial district’ [12], ‘local productive system’ [13]. Three broad dimensions of the literature on regional innovation systems concern us in this paper:
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interactions between different actors in the innovation process, particularly interactions between users and producers, but also between business and the wider research community,
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the role of institutions and the extent to which innovation processes are institutionally embedded in establishing systems of production,
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reliance by policy makers on analyses that attempt to operationalize the concept of regional innovation systems.
We contend that the interactions between actors in regional innovation systems have not been sufficiently explored, while the institutional context of these interactions has been largely overlooked. As a result, the validity of recommendations for innovation policy making based on the current analyses of regional innovation systems is somewhat questionable.
The aim of this paper is to review and summarize the most important ideas and arguments of the recent theorizing on regional innovation systems, and to present an account of the shortcomings and challenges in research on regional innovation systems.
Section snippets
Regional innovation systems: previous and current discussions
Since the early 1990s, the concept of regional innovation systems has gained considerable attention from policy makers and academic researchers as a promising analytical framework for advancing our understanding of the innovation process in regional economies [2], [5], [14]. The popularity of the concept of a regional innovation system is closely related to the emergence of regionally identifiable nodes or clusters of industrial activity as well as the surge in regional innovation policies,
Confusion and empirical validation
According to Cooke and Morgan [39], a strict reading of the literature suggests that only three regions are true regional innovation systems: Silicon Valley, Emilia-Romagna, and Baden-Württemberg. However, the variety of such systems alludes to a problem of definition and empirical validation. If the concept of a regional innovation systems is widely accepted in its specific form and used to derive strategies and policies, the basis for definition and existence remains obscure; at the very
Concluding remarks
A regional innovation system is a normative and descriptive approach that aims to capture how technological development takes place within a territory. The approach has been widely adopted to underline the importance of regions as modes of economic and technological organization, and to highlight policies and measures that increase the innovative capacity of diverse kinds of regions.
It is generally conceded that the innovative performance of regions is improved when firms are encouraged to
Acknowledgement
Earlier versions of this research have been presented at the 44th European Congress of the European Regional Science Association in Porto and at the 15th Congress of the ‘Association de Science Régionale De Langue Française’ in Brussels. The authors would like to thank Olivier Crevoisier, Charles Edquist Leif Hommen, and Denis Maillat for their advice and comments on different versions of the article. The authors take full responsibility for the final contents of the article.
David Doloreux is a professor at the Université du Québec à Rimouski and holds the Canada Research Chair in Regional Development. He is interested in research on system of innovation and regional development. He is currently working on projects comparing regional innovation systems in Canada and Nordic Countries, and studying knowledge intensive business services, collective learning and regional development in Québec and Canada. Prior being a professor, he worked as a research fellow at the
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David Doloreux is a professor at the Université du Québec à Rimouski and holds the Canada Research Chair in Regional Development. He is interested in research on system of innovation and regional development. He is currently working on projects comparing regional innovation systems in Canada and Nordic Countries, and studying knowledge intensive business services, collective learning and regional development in Québec and Canada. Prior being a professor, he worked as a research fellow at the Division of Innovation at Lund University, and obtained a PhD in Urban Planning from the University of Waterloo in Canada. His research has been published in Regional Studies, European Planning Studies, Environment and Planning A, and the International Journal of Innovation Management.
Saeed Parto is a researcher at Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT), Maastricht University and a research fellow at the Institute for New Technologies (INTECH), the United Nations University. He is interested in the role of institutions in policy development and implementation. He completed his first degree in Economics at the University of Central England, Birmingham, UK in 1980 and worked in finance until 1993. Prior moving to the Netherlands he worked in Canada as a specialist in implementing environmental management systems (ISO 14001) and applying industrial ecology's ‘closed loop’ principles to numerous private and public organizations. He holds an MES (Environmental Studies) and a PhD (Geography) from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada where he is an adjunct at the Faculty of Environmental Studies.