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Changes in leading-edge urban and regional development processes and policies signify the rise of the 'Quaternary' or 4.0 Era of economic growth. Few such spaces exist yet, but they have prodigious global reach from locations like Cambridge (as the exemplar here), Israel and Silicon Valley. Their surface spread has led to the designation 'thin globalization' compared with 'thick' antecedents based on manufacturing and routine services. Each displays 'post-cluster' or 'platform' inter-connectivity and even early signs of 'de-globalization' via on-shoring of suppliers. Pioneers in 'crossover' innovation 4.0 platform evolution include 'flagship' corporations like FAGAMi (Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft). These and other flagships acquire and site labs in proximity to Cambridge's and other university research institutes and talent. They work to what seems like a neoliberal 'Plan for the Future' in at least three cases embedded in futuristic urban design utopias. This further advantages innovation 'microsystems' like Cambridge and innovation 'macrosystems' like Silicon Valley that evolve diversified 'platform-clusters' of 'crossover' innovations flowing from interactions among microelectronic systems, advanced mobility, machine learning, AI, robotics be mitigated healthcare. The research problem is how can such extreme uneven growth polarization and [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, the EU has changed its economic development support strategy for regions from a mainly procedural budgeting model to a more substantive one, especially regarding the priority to promote regional innovation. Thus, instead of a regional operational programme that emphasized budgetary controls, phasing and expenditure refinement, this was to be paralleled by a regional innovation strategy (RIS phase 3 or RIS3) to attract EU regional funding assistance. This was a radical departure from all hitherto prevailing ERDF/FEDER methodologies by which regions and their member states submitted such funding requests. This article explores this policy transition, its strengths and weaknesses. In particular, it presents empirically informed accounts of the ways in which RIS3 was received, comprehended and implemented in three regions of Portugal. In addition, it presents results of interviews also conducted with key central state actors in Lisbon. A major aim was to see how each policy level reacted to the way innovation was pre-defined in terms of regional ‘smart specialization' whereby regions dropped un-innovative activities and projected their best candidate specializations. Questioning of the validity of the notion in the innovation context occurs based on both primary and secondary research. A secondary aim was to investigate the methodologies, concepts and policy frameworks actually deployed in developing RIS3s in three Portuguese regions; Algarve, Centro and Norte. Third, another important aim in a follow-up section was to conduct anex postevaluation of the resulting approved implementation strategy. Discussion and conclusions are drawn in the final section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Paul David first published his economic histories of path-dependent innovation, the subject has exerted fascination upon scholars of innovation and technological change and, latterly, regional scientists and economic geographers. This paper speaks of the third and fourth of these communities in the main, though it may have theoretical and empirical elements of interest to the first two as well. It begins with an overview of recent perspectives and critiques concerning the relevance of the path dependence concept to the understanding of regional economic development and its associated governance. It then goes on to discuss the contribution of evolutionary economic geography to thinking about “branching” from path dependence and the creation of new paths. Evidence for key generic spatial processes of path transition is provided before the main content of the paper concludes with new insights into the contributions of regional innovation policy to path evolution. Conclusions are then drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become clear that the idea of regional learning is an inadequate way of evolving regional economic development because of numerous problems of composition or utilizing samples of one, learning legacies and delays and impossibility of repeat experience. So, perforce, to offset regional imbalances responsible agencies are having to explore solutions endogenously in greater measure. This means constructing regional advantage, not an easy thing to do, by integrating and exploiting a range of assets from economic strengths to knowledge assets, good governance and creativity. Of great importance in this is seeking to promote “related variety” among economic activities. Single innovations diffuse swiftly across technology “platforms” into related industries because absorptive capacity is high among them. The key trick in constructing regional advantage is designing appropriate policy platforms that mix variable policy instruments in an integrated and judicious manner. This paper maps out a theoretical approach enabling this to be accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in epistemology in biosciences are generating important spatial effects. The most notable of these is the emergence of a few 'Bioscience Megacentres' for basic and applied bioscience medical and clinical research (molecular, post-genomic, proteomics, etc.), biotechnology research, training in these and related fields, academic entrepreneurship and commercial exploitation by clusters of 'drug discovery' start-up and spin-off companies, along with specialist venture capital and other innovation system support services. Large pharmaceutical firms that used to lead such knowledge generation and exploitation processes are becoming increasingly dependent upon innovative drug solutions produced in such clusters, and megacentres are now the predominant source of such commercial knowledge. 'Big pharma' is seldom at the heart of megacentres such as those the paper will argue are found in about four locations each in the USA and Europe, but remains important for some risk capital ('milestone payments'), marketing, and distribution of drugs discovered. The embedding of these processes also creates major new regional disparities, which some regional governances have recognised, causing them to develop responsibilities for regional science policy and funding to offset spatial biases intrinsic in traditional national (and in the EU, supranational) research funding regimes. Responses follow a variety of models ranging from market-following to both regionalised (decentralising by the centre) and 'regionalist' (ground-up); in each case, the role of megacentres is justified in health terms. But their role in assisting fulfilment of regional economic growth visions is also clearly perceived and pronounced in policy terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]