Constructing Regional Advantage: Towards State-of -the-Art Regional Innovation System Policies in Europe

European Science Foundation

Austrian Science Fund

Globalisation pressures force European regions to enhance their competitiveness. Regions are considered a key level where innovation processes are shaped, coordinated and governed through localized capabilities. Often competitive advantages do not emerge spontaneously, but are the results of collective actions and initiatives taken by firms, research organizations and governments at various levels.
Policies for constructing regional advantage cannot be based on one "best practice" model but should reflect the different conditions and problems of the respective regions. These vary between types of Regional Innovation Systems (such as institutionally "thick" or "thin"; networked or fragmented) as well as the dominating knowledge base of local industries (analytical, synthetic, symbolic). So far very little is known about how policies for constructing regional advantage can work in such different settings. The project has aimed at filling this gap by comparing policy initiatives in different regional, institutional and sectoral settings in seven European countries. In Austria the ICT sector in the regions of Vienna, Upper Austria and Salzburg has been investigated regarding its Innovation activities, Innovation cooperations and knowledge sources, and the role of Innovation policy.