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This editorial seeks to contribute to a critical rethinking of the regional innovation system (RIS) framework and to examine what kind of ‘reinvention’ of regional innovation policy is needed in the era of grand societal challenges. The concept of challenge-oriented regional innovation systems (CoRISs) is employed to cast light on how RISs can be reconfigured in response to societal challenges. Based on the articles in this issue, the editorial distinguishes between two routes into which CoRISs could be developed: RIS reorientation strategies versus RIS transformation strategies. The first strategy assumes that at least some place-specific problems that are related to grand societal challenges can be tackled by use of existing assets, actors and institutions in historically grown RISs. RIS transformation strategies go a step further. They emphasize disruption and the strategic creation of new RIS elements. These include the inclusion of new innovative actors and actor groups, the implementations of institutional change, and also the disruption of old network linkages and the establishment of new ones. The editorial also reflects on the uptake of the two strategies in different spatial contexts as regional preconditions and challenges vary, which may demand different strategies and solutions on the regional level.

This paper introduces an analytical framework for understanding how specialized and diversified regional innovation system (RIS) differ in the way an entrepreneurial discovery process (EDP) is likely to unfold. To analytically explore the proposed framework, we deploy a sequential explanatory design approach, using quantitative data to analyze the regional industry structure of the city regions of Bergen and Stavanger in Western Norway, followed by a qualitative analysis of interviews with key stakeholders in both regions. We find that the city regions face unique challenges that align with an understanding of their respective RIS categorization, providing evidence that the framework proposed serves as a useful guide in understanding the development of an EDP.

The paper presents a novel theoretical framework to analyse the emergence and growth of industrial clusters. The framework focuses on the role of change agency for the modification of assets that i...

The unpredictable impacts of sudden shocks such as the current COVID-19 pandemic or the current energy crisis accelerated by the Russia-Ukraine war have led to a renewed interest in regional economic resilience. Much of the literature focuses attention on how regional economies and industries could bounce back, that is, how they could return to their pre-shock conditions. Other scholars have proposed to construe resilience as bouncing forward to capture the mechanisms and processes that underpin positive adaptation and structural change in response to an acute crisis. In this article, we argue that both conceptualisations do not consider shocks and crises as a window of opportunity for regional economies to transform into a radically different and more desirable trajectory. We bring a new perspective into play, that is, transformative resilience which places shifts towards more sustainable pathways centre stage. This understanding of regional economic resilience acknowledges that a crisis may bring about permanent structural change and considers to what extent these transformations are to the benefit of society and the environment. This article seeks to identify in a conceptual way what factors and dynamics are vital for enhancing the transformative resilience of regions. To this end, we draw on recent insights from the debate on challenge-oriented regional innovation systems and elaborate on the role of pre-shock conditions and various core processes in building up regional transformative resilience.

This paper provides a conceptual framework to understand the innovation‐based restructuring of industries in a regional context. The framework includes how firms create new assets, reuse existing assets, and overcome hampering barriers to support innovation processes. The framework also covers how such asset modifications take place at the innovation system level. A core argument is that innovation activity is strengthened and regional restructuring supported when firms’ internal assets are aligned with assets at the regional innovation system level. We illustrate the framework with empirical examples of how digitalization as an innovation process takes place in firms in traditional manufacturing industries and in local newspapers in the Agder region in southern Norway.

Regions across the world are searching for ways to fashion new green growth paths and to promote green shifts in mature industries. The article aims to explore conceptually and based on illustrative empirical examples from the literature how green restructuring unfolds in regions. We propose a framework that explicates how regional preconditions in form of pre-existing industrial structures, organisational support structures, institutional set-ups and natural assets are transformed into various types of green path development through agentic processes of asset modification.

Research in economic geography on innovation and regional development is an important and thriving research area in Scandinavia, which has contributed significantly to theoretical and empirical advancements beyond the Scandinavian research environments. This chapter demonstrates how the field has developed and changed its focus over the years, touching upon and developing around central academic and societal topics from deindustrialisation, clusters and regional innovation systems to creativity, green transition and changing regional development paths. The chapter focuses on how research milieus have developed in Scandinavia, how theories, methodologies and methods have advanced and how researchers have worked together nationally and internationally during the last four decades.

Human agency has become a core topic in economic geography complementing traditional, structural approaches to explain regional development. This paper contributes firstly with a discussion of the theoretical and conceptual relationships between the agency of individuals, organizations, and systems. Secondly, it proposes a novel analytical framework for studying how human agency, combined with external changes affects regional economic development, and how regional structural preconditions and external changes explain the activation of change agency. Thirdly, the relevance of the framework is examined through comparative studies of about 20 years of industrial development in three Norwegian regions. This illuminates the importance of human agency in regional transformation processes, how regional preconditions influence but not determine the activation of change agency, as well as why and how regional policy plays a role in the emergence of change agency. Yet, future research needs to investigate the context conditions, which promote or hinder the activation of change agency, to trace changes in economic activities over time and link it to causal mechanisms, and to pay attention to the unintended consequences of change agency in the longer-term.

The paper aims to contribute to better understanding of entrepreneurial discovery processes and regional industrial growth by examining (1) how different regional contexts affect entrepreneurial di...

The article discusses mechanisms and policy that stimulate regional economic restructuring. Economic restructuring is conceptualised through the notion of path development. The article distinguishe...

More importantly, these days, there seems to be the kind of crises and turbulence that we have to deal with as citizens of a world that changes rapidly, with consequences that call upon us as scholars in ways we did not conceive of as urgent until we found ourselves in the midst of them. As such, the crises that face us as academics, paradoxically serve to alleviate the minor and paradigmatic crises pertaining to our disciplines, as we are constantly summoned to revise and refine our philosophies and methods to be relevant to cope with the great challenges of our time. The diagnosis of crisis is not unknown to the field of geography. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Norwegian Journal of Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The role of exogenous sources of new path development has been underplayed in the literature on regional industrial change so far. The aim of this article is to explore in a conceptual way under which conditions and in what ways non-local knowledge can lead to new path development in different regional innovation systems (RISs). We distinguish between organizationally thick and diversified RISs, thick and specialized RISs and thin RISs and argue that these types vary substantially in their needs for exogenous sources as well as in their capacities to attract and absorb knowledge generated elsewhere.

This article casts light on the increasingly complex geography of innovation and knowledge sourcing activities. We argue that the spatial patterns of learning and knowledge exchange vary substantially across different types of regions and industries. The article elucidates such variations by combining three analytical approaches, namely, (i) modes of innovation (differentiating between science-technology-innovation (STI) and doing-using-interacting (DUI) modes), (ii) regional innovation systems (distinguishing between organizationally thick and diversified, thick and specialized, and thin systems), and (iii) types of knowledge linkages that connect actors during the innovation process. We explore in detail the key characteristics of the spatial architectures of innovation and knowledge flows in STI and DUI industries located in regional innovation systems with varying degrees of organizational thickness and specialization. We also discuss empirical examples documented in the extant literature to illustrate our arguments on how innovation and knowledge circulation unfold in space in various territorial and industrial contexts.

This special issue is devoted to studying mechanisms that may stimulate or hamper the renewal of existing industry paths and the growth of new paths. In this guest editorial, we look closely at the...

Path creation is a key concept in economic geography. So far, particularly scholars within evolutionary economic geography have pioneered research on this topic. This paper critically discusses the...

The chapter aims to contribute to better understanding of links between entrepreneurial discovery processes and regional industrial growth. This is achieved by examining (1) how different regional contexts, conceptualised as different types of regional innovation systems, affect entrepreneurial discovery processes, and (2) how entrepreneurial discoveries support specific types of industrial path development in different regions. The chapter includes empirical studies of the formation and growth of three ‘official’ regional clusters supported by Innovation Norway’s programme for immature clusters. The chapter argues that entrepreneurial discoveries should be institutionalised by the activities of system-level entrepreneurs in order to achieve considerable regional industrial effects in the form of new or transformed industries in a region. In our cases institutionalisation occurs through the creation of cluster organisations and development of the knowledge infrastructure.

This article argues that the emergence of regional clusters relies on both necessary pre-existing conditions for cluster appearance in general and triggering factors that cause clusters to emerge in particular places. This approach is used to analyse two ‘critical cases’; the emergence of the synthetic-knowledge boat building industry in the Arendal area in Norway from the mid-1950s and the analytical-knowledge cancer medicine industry in Oslo around the year 2000. Although the industries and the contexts are otherwise very different, the framework turns out to be useful in interpreting the emergence of the two clusters. However, the specific pre-existing conditions and the triggering factors differ between the two cases. The Arendal boat building industry emerged through the combination of traditional boat building skills and exogenous knowledge of the use of new plastic material, while the Oslo cancer medicine industry built on indigenously-developed scientific knowledge. The framework is useful...

The aim of this article is to explore how new industrial paths emerge and grow in peripheral regional economies. Current conceptualizations of regional path development are based on experiences from core regions and fail to provide satisfactory theoretical explanations of new path-creating activities in peripheral areas. Our conceptual approach combines the notions of path development and knowledge bases, enabling us to distinguish between an analytic and a synthetic route of path creation. We argue that due emphasis should be given to exogenous sources of new path development and policy actions in order to understand how analytical and synthetic routes unfold in peripheral regions. These factors are still underappreciated in prevailing models of path creation. The article contains an analysis of the emergence and evolution of new industries in two peripheral regions in Norway and Austria: the electronics and software industry in Arendal–Grimstad in southeastern Norway, and the software industry i...

Regional innovation systems (RISs) have received increasing interest from researchers and policy makers over the past three decades. The interest is driven partly by advances in theoretical analyses, partly by empirical studies of well-functioning, successful regional economies, partly by the growing interest in innovation as a source of competitive advantage, and partly by the need for new policies to stimulate job growth and lower regional inequalities. This chapter presents the approach of the book to further improve regional innovation studies. The chapter introduces the content of the three parts of the book; (i) theoretical advances on RIS research, (ii) empirical cases of RIS development, and (iii) discussion of regional innovation policy approaches. The chapter summarises main results from existing work within these three parts and points to how the book explores new avenues for research on RISs and sheds light on issues that have thus far received little attention.

This book discusses the latest theoretical advances in regional innovation research, presents empirical cases involving the development of regional innovation systems (RISs), and explores regional innovation policy approaches. Grounded in the extensive literature on RISs, it addresses state-of-the-art developments in light of recent theoretical advances in economic geography and related disciplines. Written in honor of Bjorn Asheim's seventieth birthday, the book includes novel and carefully selected chapters prepared by collaborators, colleagues and former PhD-students of one of the founding fathers of RIS research. Further, it makes a significant contribution to the academic debate on regional innovation and growth and offers valuable insights for scholars and policymakers alike.

This chapter analyses opportunities and challenges for regional innovation policies designed to promote new path development in different types of regional innovation systems (RISs). RISs differ enormously in their capacity to develop new growth paths due to pronounced differences in endogenous potentials and varying abilities to attract and absorb exogenous sources for new path development. We distinguish between different types of regional industrial path development, which reflect various degrees of radicalness of regional structural change. The chapter offers a conceptual analysis of conditions and influences that enable and constrain new path development in different types of RISs and outlines the contours of policy strategies that are suitable for promoting new path development in different RISs. Regarding policy strategies, a distinction is drawn between system-based and actor-based policy approaches. System-based strategies aim to improve the functioning of the RIS by targeting system failures, promoting local and non-local knowledge flows and adapting the organizational and institutional set-up of the RIS. Actorbased strategies, in contrast, support entrepreneurs and innovation projects by firms and other stakeholders. We argue that both strategies will have only a limited impact on regional economic change when applied alone. However, if they are combined, they are well suited to promote new path development. The chapter discusses which specific combinations of system-based and actor-based policy strategies matter for different types of RISs.

Ingvild Joranli’s doctoral thesis Labour Markets and the Geography of Firm Learning contains a cover essay and four articles (Papers 1–4), two of which had been published in international journals ...

The article departs from empirical studies of two competitive firms in an organisationally thin region in Norway. The main question in the article is how these firms have achieved global competitiveness. The article focuses its inquiry on how the firms organise their innovation activity, giving special attention to the firms' organisational learning and absorptive capacity. It is found that find that workplace learning enables the firms to utilise knowledge in uncommon ways. The learning rests on specific organisational traits in the firms, such as broad participation, long-term on-the-job training, the use of practice-based knowledge in innovation projects, and links to national and global knowledge sources. The characteristics of thin regions indicate that these traits make up a generally applicable strategy in such regions.

Recent theorizing of path dependence supplements the traditional view of regional path-dependent industrial development characterized by lock-in effects with paths dealing with change, that is, path renewal and path creation. Few studies, however, examine why different types of regions experience diverse path-dependent development. This article examines why organizationally thin regions are much less likely to achieve path renewal and path creation than core regions. By use of a case study of industrial development in an organizationally thin and rather peripheral region in Norway the article contends that thin regions often need external investments to avoid being trapped in path extension.

This chapter deals with the role of clusters and public policy in new regional economic path development. New path development is analysed from an institutional perspective by focussing on changes in the wider regional innovation system (RIS), including firms, universities and governmental agencies, and by placing emphasis on the role that public policy can play. We argue that new regional economic path development requires a broad-based policy approach that stimulates cross-fertilizing effects between different industrial activities within and beyond the region. While cluster policies are well suited to support the growth and sustainment of existing industries, policies for new path development should aim at regional diversification and variety creation, preferably based on existing strengths and expertise in the region. These ideas are central to the Constructing Regional Advantage (CRA) approach. Empirically, the chapter draws on case study research on two new regional economic growth paths in Sweden and Norway, namely the new media cluster in Southern Sweden and the Oslo Cancer cluster. While the first is an example of path renewal through combining knowledge bases, the latter is an example for new path creation based on scientific knowledge. The empirical analysis underlines the role that public policy can play in facilitating new regional economic path development.

Background: The paper examines the regional effects of a general innovation policy, i.e. a policy tool that does not target specific industries or subnational regions. General policy tools are an important part of the portfolio of innovation policy measures. However, there is a question over whether general tools are equally relevant for all types of firms, irrespective of their size, sector and location. Findings: The economic geography and innovation study literature, as well as the EU’s Smart Specialization approach, are based on the view that innovation policy tools must be adapted to specific regional conditions. General policy tools are insufficient unless they are adapted to individual regions. This paper examines the regional distribution of support from the Norwegian Skattefunn scheme, which is a tax incentive scheme designed to stimulate R&D activity in all types of enterprises, which has supported more than 24,000 approved R&D projects between 2002 and 2013. Based on our regression analysis, we observe that regional innovation system (RIS) variables are important for explaining the region’s ability to attract Skattefunn funding. Conclusions: Skattefunn projects are quite evenly spread across labour market regions, which are grouped into a geographical centre–periphery pattern. That is, being in a peripheral location is not a disadvantage. However, at a more detailed regional level, the Skattefunn scheme tends to favour firms in specific industries and in regions with a relatively developed regional innovation system.

The doctoral thesis makes a relevant contribution to scholarly discussions in evolutionary economic geography (EEG) about how regional industrial restructuring unfolds over time and in space. The t...

The chapter studies the relationship between companies’ knowledge bases and their sources, channels and geography of innovation-relevant knowledge. It questions whether some types of cluster initiative are too oriented towards establishing regional cooperation. Indeed, regional clusters and innovation systems assume that geographical agglomerations and regional cooperation stimulate firms’ innovation activity and value creation. However, companies are becoming increasingly integrated into global value chains and knowledge networks, suggesting that extra-regional resources are also important for innovation. Further, the geography of knowledge sources also varies between the types of knowledge that are central to firms’ innovation activity. The analysis shows that firms have innovation collaboration with many different types of partners, and that firms with different knowledge bases use partners differently. Analytical knowledge firms have more cooperation with universities, technology centres and suppliers than firms with a symbolic knowledge base. The geography of knowledge sources also varies as firms with an analytical knowledge base collaborate internationally, while companies in symbolic industries collaborate more with proximate actors. Informal channels for obtaining innovation-relevant knowledge are frequently used by firms, and the source of informal knowledge also varies between firms with different knowledge bases. Based on this, cluster initiatives should have a national and international perspective, and the design of cluster policy should enter a new ‘radical phase’ that takes more into account the geography of innovation sources and types of innovation channels of relevance to different cluster types.

The chapter discusses typical features of innovation activity in peripheral regions; regions located outside daily commuting distance from large cities. Such regions exhibit different place-specific conditions to those found in dynamic core regions, which cause peripherally located firms to innovate in certain ways. Many peripheral regions are characterized by organizationally thin regional innovation systems and bonding social capital. These are features that stimulate incremental innovations based on experience-based knowledge, which is typical of the Doing-Using-Interacting (DUI) innovation mode. Characteristics such as many DUI innovations, little local knowledge flow, low related variety of knowledge and technology and high levels of bonding social capital may result in peripheral regions becoming trapped in path extension: firms and industries strengthen their existing activity through incremental innovation, while the development of new activities through radical innovations is difficult to achieve. Firms in peripheral regions, in particular, need to source extra-regional knowledge in order to achieve more radical innovation activity. Reliance on extra-regional knowledge sources also points to the fact that external investments and policy initiatives are especially important for industrial development in peripheral regions. Firms in peripheral regions, however, need to develop organizational learning strategies in order to be able to exploit external knowledge from distant sources in their internal innovation processes.

This chapter discusses why Norwegian industry is seen as very competitive, as revealed by the Global Competitiveness Index, even when it scores low on international rankings on innovation performance. How can industry in a country with supposedly little innovation achieve global competitiveness?

This conclusion presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book examines the relation between the social form of collaboration and economic development. The pattern is to take the particular point from the Introduction, to return to it in the Conclusions and reflect on what we having gained in coherence during the journey in between. They set the scene for the ongoing argument of the book, which was illustrated by cases presented in the contributed chapters, from many countries. Managed programmes of research and development, at national or regional level, have been seen as presenting challenges to normal patterns of democracy and participation, which may have long-term implications. The debate is complicated further by the practical reality of globalisation. This book has sought to build bridges between academic discourses, and to identify the role of the researcher, deploying knowledge, in the chasm between the economic and social/institutional domains.

The construction of regional advantage has recently been emphasized by scholars as a new way of increasing firms’ competitiveness in a globalizing and learning economy. This article compares the construction of regional advantage and the development paths of specific industries in two different types of non-metropolitan regions, La Pocatiere in Canada and Tromso in Norway. The authors observe a higher level of industrial dynamism in La Pocatiere than in Tromso. They find four explanations for this variation: (1) a narrower regional innovation system (RIS) in Tromso; (2) the fact that the target industry in Tromso (marine biotechnology) is, in general, more difficult to develop outside metropolitan regions than the diverse mechanical engineering industry found in La Pocatiere; (3) a biased focus on the development of research-based knowledge and academic spin-offs in Tromso compared with a more varied set of strategies used in La Pocatiere; and (4) La Pocatiere's location in proximity to the Quebec metropo...

This paper focuses on the question to what extent knowledge sources in regional clusters stimulate the innovation activity of cluster firms. In doing so we contribute to the literature by combining two analytical approaches: by (1) distinguishing firms dominated by different innovation modes; and (2) differentiating between inter-organizational linkages and open knowledge environments as two distinct knowledge sources. Based on data from the Agder equipment supplier industry we demonstrate that mobility of labour, local buzz and inter-organizational linkages are key regional knowledge sources, but clearly more so for some types of firms than others.

Accepted version of an article in the journal: European Urban and Regional Studies. Also availble from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0969776412439200 The conceptual framework of constructing regional advantage (CRA) is implicitly relevant for large, well-off regions that have strong regional innovation systems, a diversity of industrial sectors and resourceful firms that can partake in global knowledge networks. This paper discusses the extent to which small regions, with less developed regional innovation systems, may also constitute the basis for developing regional advantage. Four cases of regional industries dominated by different innovation modes make up the empirical test bed in the paper. The innovation modes are STI (science, technology, innovation), CCI (complex, combined innovation) and DUI (doing, using, interacting). With some reformulations, the CRA framework also is found to represent a useful conceptual construct for small regions. Adapting the CRA framework to small regions involves focusing more on increasing the innovation capabilities at the level of the firm - placing less emphasis on the endogenous capacity of regional innovation systems, but emphasising the importance of experience-based knowledge in local labour markets - and concentrating more on the need for a diversity of knowledge bases at the regional level. Policy lessons for constructing regional advantages in small regions should, in general, consider the upgrading of DUI firms and stimulating extra-regional links.

This special issue is based on papers presented at the fifth International Seminar onRegional Innovation Policies at the University of Agder, Norway, October 14–15,2010. The selection of papers in this issue covers three main themes at the seminar,namely work organisations and innovation, regional innovation systems and regionalgovernance and policies. These themes, as the papers in this special issue, areinterrelated. They are interrelated in the sense that how firms organise their learningand innovation activities affects the mode of innovation and, consequently, the typeof supporting systems and policy tools that are most relevant. The idea is that firmsthat organise their innovation processes differently, for example by utilising diversetypes of knowledge, need to bring in different types of supplementary competenceand other resources from the innovation system, which then leads to the fact thatspecific policy tools are appropriate for specific types of firms. The understanding ofthe importance of differentiated or fine-tuned policy based on the specific knowledgebases and innovation modes of firms and sectors is a central topic in many articles inthis issue. This guest editorial discusses main contents of the three mentioned themesof firms' innovation modes, supporting innovation systems and innovation policy.We focus on the relatedness of these themes and the contributions of the sevenpapers in advancing the understanding of the themes. We conclude by pointing toone upcoming research themes with regard to regional innovation policy.Work Organisation and Innovation ModesInnovation mode has become a key concept in innovation studies, economicgeography and related subjects in order to underline the differentiated nature of