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...

The recent failure to deliver the Lisbon agenda has led to much soul-searching within Europe (cf. The Sapir Group, 2005 ). This failure has enlarged the gulf between the limited number of successful knowledge regions, and those regions for whom globalisation has brought further anxiety, job...