What about the regional level? Regional configurations of Technological Innovation Systems

Abstract

Regional innovation policy must not only strive for economic competitiveness, but also push novel and more sustainable technological solutions. The complex and multi-scalar process of developing and diffusing new technologies is captured by the Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) framework. However, the approach neglects regional variety and lacks a nuanced and systematic understanding of how technological change plays out differently across places. We thus complement TIS with insights from the literature on Regional Innovation Systems (RIS), which offers manifold comparisons and typologies of institutional contexts for regional innovation. We argue that three ideal-typical configurations -localist-grassroots, interactive-networked, and globalist-dirigiste -exist at the intersection between a technological and specific regional innovation system. We discuss how these regional configurations contribute differently to the development and functioning of the overall TIS and point to the innovation-related challenges they are confronted with. We illustrate our conceptual arguments with a brief comparative case study on three regions in the TIS for onshore wind energy. Overall, this paper contributes to the literature on the geographies of innovation and sustainability transitions, introduces a framework for analyzing regional variety in TIS, and enables more fine-grained and place-specific policy interventions directed at fostering specific technologies at the regional level.

The evolving role of networking organizations in advanced sustainability transitions

“…The first offshore test site was installed off the coast of the region. Many firms active in manufacturing, project development, or services, as well as specialized research institutes are located in and around Oldenburg (Fornahl et al, 2012;MacKinnon et al, 2019;Rohe and Mattes, 2021). Accordingly, the legitimacy of the technology is relatively high in the region (Rohe and Chlebna, 2021).…”

Exploring the scope of regions in challenge-oriented innovation policy: the case of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

“…North Frisia is the typical example of a broader movement of local energy transition with an increasing role of prosumers and civic energy communities (Coenen et al, 2021). Recently several studies analyzed the North Frisian energy community from different perspectives, such as local entrepreneurship, place and communities (Süsser et al, 2017) and regional varieties of technological innovation systems (Rohe and Mattes, 2021). Rohe and Mattes (2021) consider North Frisia as the typical example of a localist-grassroots configuration of innovation-based regional energy transition.…”

“…For Germany as a whole, we see a slight decrease, particularly due to decreasing number of jobs in solar energy. In Schleswig-Holstein in total 19,000 people are working in the renewable energy sector, of which a large share, around 12,850, in the wind energy sector (Ulrich and Lehr, 2018;Rohe and Mattes, 2021).…”

“…In particular, in North Frisia, farmers and private companies are the most active wind power developers. However, as Rohe and Mattes (2021) rightly noted, green entrepreneurs in the region are highly specialized to serve regional demand. Due to the locally focused nature of business innovation, not many Schleswig-Holstein companies have experience in serving foreign markets.…”

Data-Driven Coupling Coordination Development of Regional Innovation EROB Composite System: An Integrated Model Perspective

“…The term "regional innovation system", first proposed by Cooke [14] in 1989, is defined as the combination of various interacting institutions to provide an environment conducive to innovation activities in a particular region [15,16]. In recent years, many scholars [17][18][19] have paid attention to RISs. However, previous RIS research has mainly focused on elements such as influencing factors [20][21][22], structure [23,24], and evaluation [25,26].…”