In den letzten Jahren wurden Regionen, verstanden als räumliche Einheiten unterschiedlicher Größen innerhalb eines Landes, durch das Aufgreifen regionaler Entwicklungskonzepte, die Thematisierung von Innovationsnetzwerken sowie durch die Popularisierung des Cluster-Ansatzes zunehmend...

[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...

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)...

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...

[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...

The undeniable importance of knowledge and innovation in modern economies justifies the increasing interest that scholars are taking in studying knowledge-intensive busi-ness services (KIBS). Since the mid 1990s, there has been a significant increase in the attention paid to KIBS and their role...

Although the post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe experienced radical economic reforms, in many cases, the transformation of the industry sector has not been completed. As a result, the majority of enterprises is not internationally competitive and technological innovation is low. A model...