This paper addressed the need for research regarding the role of associations in innovation systems. As defined here, the term association embraces not only organisations like business associations, but all actors who associate to pursue joint objectives and positively influence their (regional)...

Nationale und internationale Transformationsprozesse machen an den Grenzen einzelner Regionen nicht halt, sondern beeinflussen deren weiteren Entwicklungsverlauf maßgeblich. Gerade strukturschwache Regionen sind in besonderer Weise von Transformationsprozessen betroffen, da Strukturschwäche...

[Zielsetzung des Arbeitspapiers ...] Um das Themenfeld des innovationsbasierten regionalen Strukturwandels näher zu beschreiben, ist es Ziel des Arbeitspapiers, unterschiedliche Ansatzpunkte und Ziele für einen innovationsbasierten regionalen Strukturwandel herauszuarbeiten. Diese...

[Summary and Discussion] In summary, our findings suggest that the current efforts towards fulfilling the RIS3 ex-ante conditionalities are neither likely to trigger an immediate revolution in European regions' approaches towards innovation policy nor will they put an immediate or even rapid end...

While societal challenges are global in nature, solving and addressing them usually tends to take place at smaller spatial scales. As place-specific technological, institutional and actor settings have a decisive influence on the direction, scope and speed of transformative dynamics, regions...

The innovation system approach has become a current and frequently used tool for the assessment of innovative activities in different fields of study. So far, however, there is no unanimous agreement on the issue of the most relevant perspective which has to be taken when applying the approach...

Policies aimed at supporting economically lagging regions have changed considerably in the past decades. This includes an increased link between innovation and regional policy, as well as more recently transformative policy. The WIR! Programme, funded by the Ministry of Research and Education in...

The EU wide differences in regional autonomy that we can observe today are based on comparatively recent developments which have occurred in parallel in a number of nations. In general, we found that the conception of a relevant quantitative reference framework for future research is not an easy...

[Introduction] The notion of 'smart specialisation' is set to become an important policy rationale in the upcoming structural funding period 2014-2020. Although the original academic concept of this policy approach was sectorally oriented and rooted in the analysis of the EU-US productivity gap...