Exploring Regional Innovation Policies and Regional Industrial Transformation from a Co-Evolutionary Perspective: The Case of Małopolska, Poland

Marta Gancarczyk, Marta Najda-Janoszka, Jacek Gancarczyk and Robert Hassink

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

Abstract: The Małopolska region in southern Poland has a long tradition of mature and heavy industries, but more recently also new, unrelated industries have been emerging in this region, such as knowledge intensive business services. At the same time, innovation policies have been decentralizing over the last 20 years in Poland and in the Małopolska region, therefore, the effects of regional innovation policies on regional industrial transformation (RIT) have grown. Against this background, the paper aims to explain the role of regional innovation policies in regional industrial transformation from a co-evolutionary perspective. For this purpose, it extends the common co-evolutionary theoretical framework with interaction mechanisms, i.e. the processes underlying policy-industry mutual influences, and thus explaining their co-evolution. Interaction mechanisms allow us to better understand the major directions in industrial development and in policy approach, namely, the exploitation of extant capabilities and the exploration of new economic areas. The role of innovation policy in the Małopolska RIT can be described as predominantly assisting and adjusting to industrial change with some level of proactive promotion of new industrial opportunities. Overall, we observe reciprocal relationships with regional industry rather than unidirectional influence of this policy. We find this dynamic interaction a positive phenomenon that enabled the evolution of policy to balance the exploitative and explorative approaches to industrial development.

Keywords: regional innovation policies; regional industrial transformation; co-evolution; Małopolska; Poland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-his, nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www-sre.wu.ac.at/sre-disc/geo-disc-2021_03.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wiw:wiwpeg:geo-disc-2021_03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PEGIS from Institute for Economic Geography and GIScience, Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, Austria.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gunther Maier ().