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This paper explores a widely employed instrument of regional innovation policy: the innovation incubator. It proposes that incubation approaches are moving away from a 'traditional' approach strongly premised on physical infrastructure and high-technology, to a more interactive, participatory and social mode of innovation, in line with broader developments in innovation policy and theory. To practically illustrate this shift, we take two cases: a 'traditional' style of incubation in Wales, UK, and a 'next generation' incubation programme in Finland. This paper reflects on incubators as a mode of regional innovation policy, both past developments and future trends, to ensure that new policies and programmes learn from best (and indeed, worst) practice and build on, rather than replicate, past approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the implementation of the RIS3 policy agenda. Based on two surveys and various phone interviews, it underlines that Europe's diverse pattern of institutional arrangements poses locally contingent policy challenges in which regional governance capacities are at least as important an issue as techno-economic potentials. In detail, it demonstrates how Southern Europe profited from novel practices while Eastern Europe had to invest substantially to change existing routines. Concluding, it argues that the main merit of RIS3 processes may, in fact, lie in their contribution to changing routines and practices of governance even if those, for now, remain without measurable effect on policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]