The feasibility of the concept of a national innovation system (NIS) in the globalizing world had already been questioned in its early days and recently long-time advocates of the NIS approach have also raised their doubts. Along with more traditional facilitating policy model, we propose...

In the immediate future foreign labour will play an increasingly important role in the competitiveness of expertise-intensive firms and whole urban regions in Finland as has already happened in many other western countries in recent years. Due to high birth rates at the late 1940s and the early...

The creative class thesis put forward by Florida [(2002a) The Rise of the Creative Class and How it's transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books)] has in recent years been subject to vivid debate and criticism. This article applies the creative class thesis...

The Nordic countries have a quite different urban structure and social systems than the USA. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden may then constitute a critical test of the empirical reach of Richard Florida's much cited creative class thesis beyond its empirical basis in the USA. This paper...

Polytechnics are newcomers in companies' regional innovation environments in Finland. Particularly in regions with no university of their own or with only few knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) providers, they may become, and in some cases already are, important providers of...

This is an introduction to the special issue on service competitiveness and cohesion, based on the outcomes of the XVII RESER Conference in Tampere, Finland, 13--15 September 2007. It shows the rich diversity of research across Europe and the rest of the world but more importantly, such research...

This article sheds light on the relationship and tension between competitiveness and cohesion as undercurrents and continuous causes of controversies in the regional innovation policy. The in-built problems in regional innovation policy that emerge because this policy is essentially a synthesis...

This paper explores the role of policymakers in encouraging endogenous growth in regions. Policymakers in many regions have sought to create the local conditions and the knowledge base that will allow a dynamic and innovative cohort of new knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial firms to emerge. We...

Sotarauta M. and Kautonen M. (2007) Co-evolution of the Finnish national and local innovation and science arenas: towards a dynamic understanding of multi-level governance, Regional Studies 41, 1085-1098. In Finland, science policy is in the hands of central government and regions/localities do...