Strategic agency and institutional change: investigating the role of universities in regional innovation systems (RISs). Regional Studies. Past analyses rooted in the thick description of regions successful in constructing regional innovation systems have given way to analyses more focused on the intentionality in these processes, and how actors in regions with their own wider networks can shape these high-level changes in regional fortunes. As part of this, place-based leadership has emerged as a promising concept to restore both agency and territory to these discussions, but it remains under-theorized in key areas. This paper contributes to these debates by arguing that there remains a reduction of agency to organizations, and that place-based leadership research needs to take into account organizational dynamics and interests in for bettering our understanding of the dynamics of place-based leadership in regional innovation systems.

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The conceptual framework of constructing regional advantage (CRA) is implicitly relevant for large, well-off regions that have strong regional innovation systems, a diversity of industrial sectors and resourceful firms that can partake in global knowledge networks. This paper discusses the extent to which small regions, with less developed regional innovation systems, may also constitute the basis for developing regional advantage. Four cases of regional industries dominated by different innovation modes make up the empirical test bed in the paper. The innovation modes are STI (Science, Technology, Innovation), CCI (Complex, Combined Innovation) and DUI (Doing, Using, Interacting). The CRA framework is found to represent a useful conceptual construct also for small regions provided some reformulations. Adapting the CRA framework to small regions involves focusing more on increasing the innovation capabilities at the firm level, placing less emphasis on the endogenous capacity of regional innovation systems -but emphasising the importance of experience-based knowledge in local labour markets -and concentrating more on the need for diversity of knowledge bases at the regional level. Policy lessons for constructing regional advantage in small regions should, in general, consider the upgrading of DUI-firms and stimulating extraregional links.