Knowledge Production in European Regions: The Impact of Regional Strategies and Regionalization on Innovation

In the last 15 years, the regional scale was used to implement innovation strategies in European Union. Departing from the discussion of the relevance of innovation policy at the regional level, the article benefits from the knowledge production function framework to estimate patterns considering 175 European regions. It is intended to understand whether regional innovation strategies developed and applied between 1994 and 2001 were successful at an aggregated level in contributing for knowledge creation measured in terms of patents and high technology patents. The results underline the relevance of private R&D expenditure and medium and high technology employment to increase patent numbers. The models suggest also that administrative regionalization may be important to regional innovation and that the creation and implementation of a regional strategy have a positive contribution for high tech innovation.     

Evolution of knowledge bases in European regions: searching for spatial regularities and links with innovation performance

This paper aims at a greater comprehension of the distribution of differentiated knowledge bases and their association with innovation performance. Drawing on evolutionary economic geography, we applied a combinatorial and dynamic view on knowledge bases. The main contribution is the examination of changes and transformations of knowledge bases over time in particular group of regions in Europe and links with innovation performance. Our study revealed systematic regularities between regions with different innovation performance and their knowledge bases. With decreasing regional innovation performance the volatility of knowledge bases over time increases. Innovation leaders evinced stability over time and the most balanced composition of knowledge bases (compared with Central and Eastern Europe regions). Western European countries and regions exhibit the most balanced structure of knowledge bases. An important complementarity and synergy has been identified in the close relatedness of the symbolic knowledge base to the analytical knowledge base. The highest intensity of SME cooperation takes place in regions with a strong analytical base and in regions with the most balanced mix among all three bases (particularly in the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium. Underperforming in innovation show a balanced mix of synthetic and symbolic knowledge bases.     

Regional Innovation Policies in the Czech Republic and the Case of Prague: An Emerging Role of a Regional Level?

The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of the development of Czech innovation policy which started to get its shape in the first years of the 21st century. The article traces its origins to a number of interlinked factors—the introduction of European regional policy in the Czech Republic, the increased inflow of foreign direct investment into R&D-intensive sectors and also the devolution of power to Czech regions that were established in 2001 and gave a new, regional dimension to research and innovation policy. It pays particular attention to the process through which the regionally-based innovation policy advocated by the European Union (EU) has been translated and adapted in the context of a new EU member state. As an illustration of the efforts at the regional level to make a better use of the potential of R&D and innovation in the regional development, a case study of a regional innovation strategy of the City of Prague is analysed. The City of Prague was selected for a critical analysis of an innovation system and innovation policy due to the fact that it is a region with significant but until now not fully exploited innovation potential and, in addition, its first innovation strategy has been recently adopted. The innovation strategy is closely scrutinized and the process of its elaboration is critically examined within the European and especially national context. The authors demonstrate that there is a lot of conceptual ambiguity and confusion associated with the process of transferring the experiences of Western European regions to the Czech Republic. The authors believe that at least some of their observations and analysis of weaknesses of the process through which the regional innovation strategy (RIS) has been carried out will have relevance for other Czech regions and even for other regions in the new EU member states.     

Smart specialization as a strategy to develop early-stage regional innovation systems

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the role of smart specialization in catalyzing the development of early-stage regional innovation systems in less advanced regions, either by facilitating the emergence of some defining elements that were lacking or accelerating the development of others, such as: a regional knowledge base and a dynamic learning process, institutional structures, network integration mechanisms among key innovation actors, regional industrial specializations, and collective identities. The paper exemplifies this process with the case of Romania, a country where the research and innovation system is centralized at national level and regional innovation systems are in the early days. The transformations taking place in the Romanian regions within the process of implementing smart specialization, assisted by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in the project “Targeted Support to Smart Specialization in Romania”, suggest a dynamic coagulation of institutional, financial, policy, and human factors that catalyzed the development of regional innovation systems in the country and introduced a novel approach to innovation policy.     

SPATIAL HETEROGENEITY IN KNOWLEDGE,INNOVATION, AND ECONOMIC GROWTH NEXUS: CONCEPTUAL REFLECTIONS AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

By drawing on the Schumpeterian distinction between invention (i.e., new ideas and knowledge creation) and commercialization of new ideas (i.e., innovation), this paper shows that knowledge and innovation are both important drivers of economic growth, but have heterogeneous spatial impacts. In particular, the growth benefits accruing from knowledge seem rather selective and concentrated across space whereas the growth benefits generated by innovation seem more diffusive, and regions innovating in the absence of a strong local knowledge base can be as successful as more knowledge‐intensive regions in turning innovation into a higher growth rate, possibly by exploiting local informal knowledge and/or knowledge spillovers. These results are of great importance for the design of research and innovation policies within the frame of the Europe 2020 strategy.     

Regional technological change and path dependency in the Danish food processing industry

Evolutionary theories of technological change arguably exert the greatest impact on our understanding of technological change. According to evolutionary economic theory the process of technological change is driven by the continual creation of technological variety through innovation and innovative firm entry and the destruction of variety through the processes of imitation (diffusion), selection and plant exit. This joint process of variety creation and destruction translates micro-economic diversity into technological progress. A third principle of evolutionary economic theory is the principle of heredity, the communication of information and knowledge over time. The dependence of technology on past and existing knowledge tends to move firms, regions and countries along relatively well-defined technological trajectories. In this paper technology is measured as a pair of capital and labour input coefficients. Empirical analysis of the Danish food processing industry reveals that technology varies markedly across regions and that differences in regional technological performance persist over time. Multivariate analysis of variance confirms that spatial variation in techniques of production is significant. This study underpins the evolutionary theory of technological change confirming that in the Danish food processing industry, regions move along relatively well-defined technological trajectories.     

REGIONAL GROWTH,INNOVATION, AND LATENT NONLINEAR EFFECTS

This paper studies the link between knowledge, innovation, and growth in European regions using nonparametric methods. Our findings suggest that knowledge inputs and the share of innovative firms have a heterogeneous and nonlinear relationship with growth. This evidence has been exploited to examine the consequences of alternative policies using a counterfactual estimation setup, the results of which imply that increasing the formal knowledge base may be optimal in most regions. Less knowledge and innovation intensive regions will also benefit from a higher innovation potential and from a trustworthy and entrepreneurial economic environment.     

Geography of Knowledge-based Collaboration in a Post-communist Country: Specific Experience or Generalized Pattern?

This article addresses the role of geographical proximity for knowledge and innovation collaboration patterns in the Czech Republic and assesses the factors which determine the spatial distribution of innovation co-operation. The article uses alternative sources of empirical data to map collaboration patterns of innovating companies, research institutes and universities and to find basic regularities. By this, the article aims to fill in the gap in current research focused rather on most advanced regions by adding new knowledge from a transformation, post-communist economy. Also, it aims to shed light on the issue of the role of proximity between actors involved in collaboration in the sphere of knowledge and innovation creation which still remains rather elusive. The findings indicate that even though co-location and intra-regional knowledge and innovation collaboration exist, it cannot be regarded as a decisive characteristic. Geographical proximity is not a crucial condition in knowledge and innovation collaboration as all actors are involved to an important degree in international linkages. Yet, the role of the specific institutional context and factors at micro-level influence the innovation co-operation pattern.     

R&D Cooperation in Innovation Systems—Some Lessons from the European Regional Innovation Survey (ERIS)

Our paper summarizes some of the main results of the European Regional Innovation Survey (ERIS) as far as they are discussed in this special issue of European Planning Studies . The overall target of the ERIS project is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of determinants crucial for the innovation potential of any region, i.e. innovative and non-innovative manufacturing firms, business services and research institutions, as well as the innovative linkages and networks between these actors. Empirical research is based upon almost 8600 questionnaires collected in 11 European regions. Results confirm some of the common hypotheses on the relationship between space and innovation networks but others are contrary to existing scientific knowledge. Obviously the impact of national innovation systems on the innovation activities of manufacturing firms in a given European region is-at least-as strong as the impact of the respective regional innovation system. The spatial range of innovative linkages significantly depends on the size, the type of the cooperation partner, the R&D intensity and the industry of the analysed manufacturing firm. For example, the higher the technology intensity of the industry, the greater is the need of each firm to use intraregional knowledge via innovation linkages. It is therefore an important task in regional innovation policy to promote network-building among firms and other actors of a regional innovation system and to interlink these intraregional networks with national and international knowledge sources.     

Regional Innovation Systems and European Research Policy: Convergence or Misunderstanding?

In this article the question of interfacing, innovation policy and regional policy at the European level is addressed. Under which conditions will the new European research policy, relying on networks of centres of excellence, be compatible with 'cohesion' objectives? Since there will be no unique regional development scheme based on science and technology, how can policy-makers take into consideration the variety of local contexts? The analysis focuses on the fact that the concept of regional innovation system can be misleading for describing the territorial context. However, a cognitive approach seems possible, based on the notion of regional competence to innovate. The analyses are illustrated with empirical results concerning the French regions, and especially Alsace.     

互联网、产业集群与全球生产网络——新的信息和通信技术对产业空间组织的影响

新的信息和通信技术在经济发展中的作用不仅仅反映在它创造了一个新的产业部门,更重要的是它促进了知识的扩散、应用和创新。这使得信息时代的企业学习和创新过程,已经呈现出交织并存的两种模式:即在全球层次运作的跨国企业网络和在地方层次演进的企业集群网络。文章从信息和知识的角度,探讨信息时代的区域地理特征,以及信息和通信技术对产业空间组织的影响效应。重点分析全球生产网络和地方产业集群中的信息和知识过程,以及互联网技术所起的作用及其发展动态。     

Changing regional systems of innovation in Greece: the impact of regional innovation strategy initiatives in peripheral areas of Europe

In the context of convergence and cohesion between the European regions, the promotion of innovation in regions that are in different phases of development has been a central objective of European regional policy. For this purpose, the European Commission has launched many innovation schemes and many European regions have conducted initiatives of this kind. In this article, based on the implementation of successive European regional innovation projects in three Objective 1 regions in Greece, namely Central Macedonia, Western Macedonia and Thessaly, the trajectory and the changes that have occurred in their system of innovation are examined. At the outset, considering the outcomes of the first phase of the RTP/RIS exercise, the obstacles in forming these regions' dynamic innovation systems are identified. Thereafter, upon the outcomes of the follow-up exercise of RIS+projects, an imminent change in these regions is observed, highlighting the marking of an innovation-oriented policy addressed to create a supporting institutional framework and shaping the regional innovation environment. Based on these observations, it is argued that European regional policy, via these innovation schemes, has significantly contributed to the reinforcement of innovation systems of participating regions.     

Do Regions Make a Difference? Regional Innovation Systems and Global Innovation Networks in the ICT Industry

Access to global innovation networks (GINs) has been unequal across the regions of the world. While certain regions are considered knowledge hubs in GINs, others still remain marginalized; this points to the role of regional innovation systems (RISs) in the emergence and development of GINs. Using firm-level data collected through a survey and case studies in 2009–2010, this paper systematically compares the patterns of global networks in the information and communications technology industry in a selection of European, Chinese and Indian regions. The results show that GINs are more common in regions which are not organizationally and institutionally thick, suggesting that GINs may be a compensatory mechanism for weaknesses in the RIS.     

Spatial and Sectoral Characteristics of Relational Capital in Innovation Activity

The paper presents prima facie evidence of the role of relational capital in innovation activities, and underlines the spatial and sectoral difference of the effects of relational capital on innovation processes. Relational cpaital is defined in this paper as the stock of relations that a firm can entertain with other firms, institutions, research centres, measured through the intensity of cooperation among local actors. The paper is structured in two parts. In the first part, a review on the literature is presented, and the similarities and differences between the concept of relational capital and the more common concept of knowledge spillovers is underlined. In the second part, the empirical results of the analysis are presented; the empirical analysis is based on a database of 133 firms' observations, located in different geographical areas. With a quantitative approach, the paper replies to the following key questions: Is relational capital a determinant for innovation activities? If it is so, does it have the same role in urban and non-urban areas? Does it have a different role in specialized and despecialized areas? The empirical results to these questions help in understanding whether it is true that competitive city regions in the global economy are the major locations for relatively exclusive knowledge and learning resources. The paper shows that if relational capital plays a role in innovation activities, it may very well be that its role strongly depends on the sectoral as well as the spatial characteristics in which the innovation process takes place. Non-urban areas characterized by strong local synergies and highly specialized activities may even be more facilitated in their inovation activity.     

Regional Concentration of the Knowledge-based Economy in the EU: Towards a Renewed Oligocentric Model?

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.     

Changing industrial production systems and regional development in the New Europe

The continuing expansion and deepening integration of the European Union is redefining the map of threats and opportunities for both companies and regions in Europe. In this paper I analyze the changing geography of the production system in three industries – automobiles, clothing and steel – as a product of the strategies and tactics of companies, states (at EU, national and regional levels) and trades unions, as they seek to shape geographies of production to favour their interests within this changing European political–economic space. It is argued that the end product of this process will be the creation of new and sharper forms of regional uneven development and qualitative differentiation between regions, as well as a renewed widening rather than further narrowing of regional differences in economic performance and well–being.     

Innovative Capacity,Educational Attainment and Economic Development in the European Union: Causal Relations and Geographical Variations

This article sets out to examine the innovative capacity of the European Union (EU) countries and regions vis-à-vis educational attainment and economic development, as it is frequently stated that innovation and the availability of human capital, specifically education, are the key drivers of economic growth. In addition to the aggregate level, the countries and NUTS-2 regions of the EU, and traditional indicators of the studied dimensions, were used as observation units. Granger causality tests identified education as a driving force behind innovative capacity and economic development, whereas the relationship between innovative capacity and economic development is bidirectional. The study results also confirm the existence of innovation paradoxes in form of rising research and development expenditures but modest rate of gross domestic product growth. The implications of the results concern the recognition of spatial generalizations and national variations, identification and creation of development strategies and the horizontal and vertical collaborations between the public and private sectors.     

Knowledge management in regional innovation networks: The case of Lahti,Finland1

This article focuses on knowledge creation and management in regional innovation networks. A knowledge management system for a regional innovation network is designed. Besides explicit and tacit knowledge, self-transcending knowledge is taken into account within the knowledge management system. In addition, considerations of knowledge vision as well as methods from futures studies are incorporated into the system. An innovation network of the Lahti regional innovation system, Finland, is used as a case example in the article. The article highlights the importance of combining loose network development and an explicit, systematic approach to planning and working on knowledge-related matters within regional innovation networks.     

Bayesian Analysis of Knowledge Spillovers in European Regions*

Abstract. This paper estimates the effects of knowledge spillovers on patent growth rates across 335 European regions over the 1989–1999 period. We propose a dynamic model based on an innovation production function. A Bayesian approach is used to take into account area‐specific innovation and spatial spillovers. The estimation of the model proceeds via Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation. The results show significant positive and negative spatial effects on innovative activity. The model allows for a rich spatial specification, which we illustrate by incorporating transport proximity measured by transportation time between regions to augment the typical spatial proximity measure of connectivity between regions. Doing this produces more pronounced spatial spillovers that exhibit a more polarized spatial pattern than a model relying on spatial proximity alone.     

Regional Innovation Systems and Economic Performance: Between Regions and Nations

This article aims at assessing the diversity of regional innovation systems and their economic performance in Europe. We propose to adapt the social systems of innovation and production (SSIP) framework at the regional level by identifying the specific arrangements of each part of the innovation and production system. Three key features of European regions are investigated using this framework: the diversity of regional SSIP, the interplay of regional and national determinants of such systems, and the impact of SSIP on regional performance. We identify a typology of regional configurations resulting from the combination of scientific, technological, educational and industrial indicators, using multivariate data analysis. A variance analysis approach is then developed in order to test the existence of specific regional growth regimes. The results highlight a persistently high level of diversity of regional configurations, notably among knowledge intensive regions, but also show that national institutional settings remain of fundamental importance in shaping a number of regional configurations. A final conclusion relates to the weak correlation observed between the structural characteristics of regions and their performance over the 2003–2007 period: regional performance remains primarily shaped by national trends. Overall, the paper questions the regional dimension of these “systems”.