Technologies and innovations in regional development: the European Union and its strategies

The subsequent volume revolves around the Social-Fields-Approach (SOFIA) as anapproach to conceptualization and operationalisation for the purpose of empiricalresearch. It contributes a new perspective and approach in research on innovation.We believe that SOFIA can have implications for both academic research and practicalapplications in reshaping the existing instruments and governance arrangementsin innovation policy. Whilst applying SOFIA, we urge researchers to leveragethe plurality of different qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method approachesin innovation studies, including less conventional methods, such as QCA (Ragin,2008). Diligent application of SOFIA can also subsequently lead to the developmentof high-level theoretical contributions.