Regional higher education institutions in regional leadership and development

Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystems

“…Notably, it is not university faculty but graduate students who are the primary entrepreneurial agents for company establishment and development of spinoffs (Hayter, Lubynsky, & Maroulis, ). Some universities “act not only as educators but also as institutional entrepreneurs, proactively networking, shaping regional strategies and attempting to change local routines as well as national policies” (Raagmaa & Keerberg, : 270). In the relatively rare vibrant entrepreneurial university ecosystem , universities are embedded within entrepreneurial regions (Hayter, ; see also Feld, ; Lawton Smith, ; Smilor & Feeser, ; Smilor et al, ; Smilor, O'Donnell, Stein, & Wellborn, ).…”

Place leadership and regional economic development: a framework for cross-regional analysis

“…In summary, the recent academic and policy literature shows that leadership is an important contributor to the success of cities and regions (e.g., Benneworth et al, 2017;Nicholds et al, 2017;OECD, 2009;Raagmaa & Keerberg, 2017;Sotarauta, 2016). However, it is too early to seek causality between leadership and regional economic development as there is a danger of ending up searching for causality between formal authority and gross domestic product (GDP) growth instead of first identifying the true nature of place leadership in different contexts (Sotarauta, 2016).…”

“…Some policy-focused researchers have asked: Under which circumstances do government agencies take on the place leadership challenge, and how do those responsibilities sit with other dimensions of authority, and the private sector? There also is an emerging corpus of work that examines the role of higher education institutions as place leaders (Benneworth, Pinheiro, & Karlsen, 2017;Raagmaa & Keerberg, 2017), while other scholarship has considered leadership within the context of peripheral economies (Horlings & Padt, 2013;Kroehn, Maude, & Beer, 2010), its contribution to the emergence of 'smart cities' (Nicholds, Gibney, Collinge, & Hart, 2017), and its role in achieving environmental, economic and social sustainability (Sotarauta, Horlings, & Liddle, 2012).…”

Making sense of leadership in urban and regional development

“…The seven papers that follow provide us with a nuanced set of conceptualizations in different contexts. In this issue, contributors use the concepts of regional leadership (Normann, Garmann Johnsen, Knudsen, Vasström, & Garmann Johnsen, 2016, in this issue;Raagmaa & Keerber, 2016, in this issue), place-based leadership (Benneworth, Pinheiro, & Karlsen, 2016, in this issue;Bentley, Pugalis, & Shutt, 2016, in this issue), and place leadership (Hu & Hassink, 2016, in this issue;Nicholds, Gibney, Mabey, & Hart, 2016, in this issue;Sotarauta & Beer, 2016, in this issue). A careful reading of the articles suggests that they contribute, firstly, to a growing body of leadership-related work in our field that embraces diversity in methods, theoretical foundations and engagement with theory, while maintaining an overlapping set of conceptualizations; secondly, the papers reveal place leadership as an identifiable form of leadership that takes us beyond the limitations of studies of single organizations; and thirdly, the concept of place leadership appears to be scalable, as it allows identification and discussion about leadership experience across different territorial scales and geographies.…”