A service-informed approach to regional innovation – or adaptation?

Abstract

This article explores the implications of a ‘service-informed’ understanding of economic growth and restructuring for regional analysis and policies. As well as growing tradability, the more fundamental role of service functions is to support other activities with specialist expertise. ‘Service’ qualities are also keys to innovativeness, including interactivity, market awareness and intangible qualities such as trust. These qualities remain outside technology-focused economic modelling and monitoring. The ‘new economy’ debate is contrasted with recent theoretical insights into service-based innovation. Innovation studies need to be broadened to encompass wider issues of economic adaptability, largely determined by service relationships. The growth of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) reflects wider regional differences in the corporate, SME and public sector nexus of knowledge-based service functions. Regional competitiveness is thus favoured more by the diversity of global urban regions than the technologies within regional innovation systems. A service-informed perspective should emphasise the full knowledge base required for regional adaptability.

Acknowledgements

This paper is a much revised version of a Plenary Address to the XIII Annual Conference of RESER, Mons, Belgium, 10 October 2003. I should like to acknowledge the contributions of the KISINN network collaborators [see Wood, 2002a], and the comments of Johannes Glückler.