Foresight as a Governance Concept at the Interface between Global Challenges and Regional Innovation Potentials

Abstract

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.

Acknowledgements

The author would especially like to thank Vivien Lo for her valuable contributions to this paper and Arlette Jappe for supplying the data from the patent analyses. The author would also like to thank two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments and recommendations.