Bridging Scales in Innovation Policies: How to Link Regional, National and International Innovation Systems

The conceptual discussion on innovation systems, emphasizing the importance of interaction between actors, institutions and policy elements for supporting technology-based economic development, has been marked by separate debates on issues of national, regional, international and sectoral systems for a long time. Recently researchers increasingly engage in logically connecting system scales which provides important insights into interdependencies. Theoretical considerations, however, have hardly been associated with ideas for application, despite the strong political value attached to the innovation systems idea by international organizations. This paper highlights the function of the innovation systems approach for policy conceptualization, focusing on the question how systems on different spatial scales—from the international over the national to the regional one—could be linked and coordinated for achieving positive effects. Major issues are which features of a national innovation system enable the evolution of successful regional innovation systems, and how a fruitful integration of international impulses into systemic approaches could be facilitated. First it is discussed which qualities usually attributed to the functioning of innovation systems are best taken care of at which spatial scale. Then the paper outlines a policy framework that aims at expediently combining tasks of innovation support at different spatial levels including the national, regional, and international dimensions.