Policy capacities for new regional industrial path development – The case of new media and biogas in southern Sweden

Hanna Martin () and Roman Martin
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Hanna Martin: CIRCLE, Lund University, Postal: CIRCLE, Lund University, PO Box 117, SE-22100 Lund, Sweden

No 2016/25, Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: Over the past few years, a growing body of work in economic geography and innovation studies has enhanced our understanding of forms and determinants of regional industrial path development. The importance of policy, however, has received limited attention and accordingly, the role of policy for the emergence and development of new regional industrial growth paths remains largely unexplored. This paper takes an institutional perspective and suggests that the regional innovation system (RIS) approach can contribute to conceptualizing and analysing the role of policy for new regional industrial path development. We argue that in order to turn regional preconditions into new growth paths, RIS require strong policy capacities, consisting of formal and governance capacities. In the empirical part, we analyse the emergence and further development of two new growth paths in the region of Scania in southern Sweden, namely biogas and new media. Based on personal interviews with policy makers, representatives from knowledge and supporting organizations and firms as well as a document analysis, we investigate how policy interventions have influenced the rise and evolution of these two industries. We show that in both cases policy-led initiatives have played an important role in enabling new path development. We find that policy can play multiple roles in nurturing and maintaining new growth paths and that these are closely interlinked with particular policy capacities of RIS.

Keywords: new path development; regional policy; regional innovation system; capacity building (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O10 O30 O38 R11 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2016-08-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eur, nep-geo, nep-ino and nep-sbm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2016_025

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