ABSTRACT
Introduction Regional innovation policies have developed strongly in Europe since the mid 1980s. This surge is mainly due to the increasing importance of the regional level with regard to diffusion-oriented innovation support policies (Cooke and Morgan 1998; Asheim et al. 2003; Fritsch and Stephan 2005). Partly supported by national and supranational support programmes and encouraged by strong institutional set-ups found in successful regional economies such as Baden-Württemberg in Germany and Emilia-Romagna in Italy, many regions in Europe have been setting up science parks, technopoles, technological financial aid schemes, innovation support agencies, community colleges and initiatives to support clustering of industries since the second half of the 1980s. The central aim of these policies is to support regional endogenous potential by encouraging the diffusion of new technologies both from universities and public research establishments to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), between SMEs and large enterprises (vertical cooperation) and between SMEs themselves (horizontal cooperation). Over the years these policies have however been the target of strong criticism for a variety of reasons: for example Lovering (1999) claimed that the theory behind them was poorly developed and was in fact being led by a few policymakers’ desire to make claims about nonexistent regional economic transformation; Tödtling and Trippl (2005) criticized one-size-fits-all approaches, on the basis that different regions suffer from different shortcomings, and that innovation policy should be designed with that in mind.
