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Abstract
Increasing globalization, if properly exploited, can provide interesting opportunities for regional economies. Nevertheless, when they are not managed with a far-sighted approach, regions, and particularly those at an intermediate level of development, can lose their comparative advantages compared with regions of developing countries. Innovation is the main instrument for improving and ensuring competitiveness to enterprises and growth opportunities to local economies. The aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of public policies in reinforcing regional innovation systems and the role of regional innovation agencies. With this in mind, we describe the policies implemented by the “Regional Agency for Technology and Innovation” of Apulia, a region in Southern Italy, highlighting its main strengths and weaknesses.
Acknowledgements
This paper was presented at the Regional Studies Association International Conference “Regions: The Dilemmas of Integration and Competition” in Prague and at the conference “Invenzioni, inventori e territori. Prospettive e politiche di sviluppo italiane e internazionali” in Artimino (Italy). The authors thank the participants at the conferences for their useful comments. They also thank two anonymous referees for their very useful suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.
Notes
Besides the theoretical framework of RIS, alternative models have been proposed in the regional development literature (Becattini, Citation1981; Scott, Citation1988; Maillat, Citation1998; Enright, Citation1994; Morgan, Citation1997; Crevoisier & Camagni, Citation2001).
Several papers have provided detailed overviews of the literature on the impact of government subsidies, tax incentives and public research programmes (David et al., Citation2000; Klette et al., Citation2000; Garcia-Quevedo, Citation2004). There is little consensus as to the effectiveness of subsidies and research programmes.
Empirical analysis sheds light on the importance of local socio-economic conditions for the genesis and assimilation of innovation and its transformation into economic growth across European regions (Rodríguez-Pose & Crescenzi, Citation2008).
Recent contributions (Hellmann & Puri, Citation2000; Kortum & Lerner, Citation1998; Kaplan & Stromberg, Citation2004) underline the positive correlations between the quantity of financial instruments provided by investment funds specialized in seed investments, start-up, early development and the growth of the technological innovation rate with reference to a given national system.
As suggested by an anonymous referee, it would be interesting to make a more systematic comparative analysis of regional innovation agencies across Europe. Our research is moving in that direction (Prota et al., Citation2010).
The concurrent operation of agencies at national and regional levels as well (as it occurs in France) should be noted in some cases.
Apulia is eligible for funding under the Convergence objective of the European cohesion policy.
Apulian universities show good results in the traditional teaching and research roles (measured by scientific publications).
More information on these two agencies can be found at the following websites: www.filas.it; www.aster.it.
For more details on this project, see the website: www.impactscan.net.