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

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  • Sebastian Rohe
  • Jannika Mattes

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) frame-work. However, the approach neglects regional variety and lacks a nuanced and systematic under-standing 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 com-parisons 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 on-shore wind energy. Overall, this paper contributes to the literature on the geographies of innova-tion 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.

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  • Sebastian Rohe & Jannika Mattes, 2021. "What about the regional level? Regional configurations of Technological Innovation Systems," PEGIS geo-disc-2021_01, Institute for Economic Geography and GIScience, Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwpeg:geo-disc-2021_01
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    Keywords

    Technological Innovation System; Regional Innovation System; Innovation Policy; Geography of Sustainability Transitions; Onshore Wind Energy;
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