Territorial innovation models in less developed regions in Europe: the quest for a new research agenda?

ABSTRACT

Territorial, economic and social cohesion in European Union (EU) regions are major challenges that regional policies are aimed at. These policies have a strong focus on innovation-driven models as key processes for reducing disparities and promoting regional development. Since the 1980s, innovation and technology policies have gained momentum and legitimacy to stimulate multiple development patterns and growth models, mainly from national economic dynamics to well performing regional systems. Theories of knowledge and learning have been developed in more successful places, producing concepts that seem unattainable for less successful ones. Given that less developed regions have been overlooked in innovation studies, this paper reviews the literature on territorial innovation models in Europe in order to understand theoretical and practical gaps for these regions and to identify trends that support the need to redirect conceptual, political and instrumental attention of territorial innovation systems. It debates the different forms of innovation in regions, the variety and role of actors, the quest for geographical and place-based resources, the determinants for innovation and the ‘how’ and ‘for what’ demands of regional development. The discussion anticipates critical questions that try to promote a ‘normative turn’ in innovation policy, propose research avenues and discuss policy implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Regional development
• innovation models
• territorial innovation
• less developed regions
• sustainable development

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, time and effort in reviewing the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The exact query string used in Scopus was: ((TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘less favoured region’) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘less developed region’) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘less-developed region’) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘less-favoured region’) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘lagging region’) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘low income region’) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘low growth region’))) AND ((innovation)) AND (Europe) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, ‘ar’) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, ‘re’) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, ‘ip’)) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, ‘English’))

2 Scopus is considered one of the most comprehensive databases (Aghaei Chadegani et al., 2013)

3 Less developed regions or less favoured regions as defined by the European Union through the different funding frameworks 1989/1993, 1994/1999, 2000/2006, 2007/2013, 2014/2020. In 2014/2020 framework Less Developed Regions are defined as regions with a GDP per inhabitant below 75% of the EU average.

Additional information

Funding

This research was developed under the support of the Research Program ‘CeNTER – Community-led Territorial Innovation’ (CENTRO- 01-0145-FEDER-000002), funded by Programa Operacional Regional do Centro (CENTRO 2020), through the ERDF and PT 2020. The funding source had no involvement in the development of the research or in the preparation of the article.