Strengthening Global-Local Connectivity in Regional Innovation Strategies : Implications for Regional Innovation Policy

With innovation increasingly important to economic development, innovation policy is attracting attention from politicians and policy-makers at all levels. Regional policy-makers face a distinctive challenge in that innovation takes place in international networks reaching far beyond their region‘s boundaries. What regional policy-makers can achieve is therefore constrained by the kind of firms and innovation networks already in their regions. This paper creates a framework for analysing regional innovation policy sensitive to this global dimension. Drawing on a global-local network analysis, the paper develops a regional classification for global-local innovation connectivity. The paper then analyses a set of common innovation policy measures, identifying how these policies can be optimised across these regional classes. The paper then highlights typical policy strengths and weaknesses for each of these various classes of regional global orientation. It argues that regional innovation strategies should pay more attention to their regions‘ global orientation if they are to become an effective tool across OECD members for improving innovation performance and economic growth rates.