What about the regional level? Regional configurations of Technological Innovation Systems

Sebastian Rohe and Jannika Mattes

PEGIS from Institute for Economic Geography and GIScience, Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business

Abstract: Regional innovation policy must not only strive for economic competitiveness, but also push novel and more sustainable technological solutions. The complex and multi-scalar process of developing and diffusing new technologies is captured by the Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) frame-work. However, the approach neglects regional variety and lacks a nuanced and systematic under-standing of how technological change plays out differently across places. We thus complement TIS with insights from the literature on Regional Innovation Systems (RIS), which offers manifold com-parisons and typologies of institutional contexts for regional innovation. We argue that three ideal-typical configurations – localist-grassroots, interactive-networked, and globalist-dirigiste – exist at the intersection between a technological and specific regional innovation system. We discuss how these regional configurations contribute differently to the development and functioning of the overall TIS and point to the innovation-related challenges they are confronted with. We illustrate our conceptual arguments with a brief comparative case study on three regions in the TIS for on-shore wind energy. Overall, this paper contributes to the literature on the geographies of innova-tion and sustainability transitions, introduces a framework for analyzing regional variety in TIS, and enables more fine-grained and place-specific policy interventions directed at fostering specific technologies at the regional level.

Keywords: Technological Innovation System; Regional Innovation System; Innovation Policy; Geography of Sustainability Transitions; Onshore Wind Energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-ino, nep-ore and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wiw:wiwpeg:geo-disc-2021_01

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