Assessing the role of technological districts in regional innovation policies: a network analysis of collaborative R&D projects

Alessandro Iudicibus, Laura Prota and Francesco Savoia ()
Additional contact information
Alessandro Iudicibus: University of Campania “L. Vanvitelli”
Laura Prota: The American University of Rome
Francesco Savoia: University of Bologna

The Journal of Technology Transfer, 2025, vol. 50, issue 1, No 3, 62-95

Abstract: Abstract As highlighted in systemic approaches to innovation, regions play an increasingly important role in designing and implementing place-based innovation policies. A wide debate has emerged on the limits and validity of different policy models, for example, between “platform” and “district-based” approaches or between a “corporatist” and an “evolutionary” Triple Helix. Within the EU Cohesion Policy framework, a number of technological districts (TDs) have been established since 2005 in the Italian “Convergence” regions to foster competitiveness, innovation, and research industry linkages. TDs have become critical actors in knowledge and technology transfer processes, and a significant amount of funding has been devoted to their development in the National Operational Programme for Research and Competitiveness (PON-R&C). In this work, we use methods drawn from social network analysis to locate TDs within the wider collaboration networks established through the PON-R&C programme. We highlight the specificity of TDs within the general policy and assess their ability to promote organisational and sectoral heterogeneity among project participants. We find that different network architectures coexist under the same policy umbrella and relate this variety to the ideal models identified in the literature.

Keywords: Innovation networks; Technological districts; Regional development; Cohesion Policy; Policy evaluation; Social network analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O38 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10961-024-10088-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:jtecht:v:50:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10961-024-10088-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/10961/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10961-024-10088-4

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Technology Transfer is currently edited by Albert N. Link, Donald S. Siegel, Barry Bozeman and Simon Mosey

More articles in The Journal of Technology Transfer from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().