Twenty years of regional innovation studies: From local-global to agency-structure

Markus Grillitsch and Björn Asheim ()
Additional contact information
Björn Asheim: University of Stavanger, Postal: Norway

No 2024/13, Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: The chapter discusses the theoretical reorientation in economic geography over the last twenty years from a focus on structures, represented by regional innovation systems, to addressing the role of human agency in regional economic development, and reflects on what the two approaches can contribute to achieving sustainable regional restructuring. We are doing this by focusing on two articles – published in 2002 and 2022 - representing the two approaches. The 2002 article discusses the role of place-specific, local resources and external knowledge in strengthening the competitiveness and innovativeness of firms and regions. This perspective is still relevant in analyses and designs of regional innovation policies. However, a realisation of the shortcomings of a structural approach to explaining the variations of regional development outcomes in different types of regions, has led to a more explicit focus on the importance of change agency in regional change processes, as articulated in the 2022 article.

Keywords: Regional innovation systems; human change agency; regional restructuring; sustainability challenges; local and global; innovation policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O30 R10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2024-10-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-geo, nep-his, nep-hme, nep-ino, nep-sbm, nep-tid and nep-ure
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://wp.circle.lu.se/upload/CIRCLE/workingpapers/202413_asheim.pdf Full text (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:hhs:lucirc:2024_013

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research, Lund University, PO Box 117, SE-22100 Lund, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Torben Schubert ().