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Policy capacities for new regional industrial path development – The case of new media and biogas in southern Sweden

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Author

  • Hanna Martin
  • Roman Martin

Summary, in English

Over the past few years, a growing body of work in economic geography and innovation studies has enhanced our understanding of forms and determinants of regional industrial path development. The importance of policy, however, has received limited attention and accordingly, the role of policy for the emergence and development of new regional industrial growth paths remains largely unexplored. This paper takes an institutional perspective and suggests that the regional innovation system approach can contribute to conceptualising and analysing the role of policy for new regional industrial path development. We argue that in order to turn regional preconditions into new growth paths, regional innovation systems require strong policy capacities, consisting of formal and governance capacities. In the empirical part, we analyse the emergence and further development of two new growth paths in the region of Scania in southern Sweden, namely biogas and new media. Based on personal interviews with policy makers, representatives from knowledge and supporting organisations and firms as well as a document analysis, we investigate how policy interventions have influenced the rise and evolution of these two industries. We show that in both cases, policy-led initiatives have played an important role in enabling new path development. We find that policy can play multiple roles in nurturing and maintaining new growth paths and that these are closely interlinked with particular policy capacities of regional innovation systems.

Department/s

Publishing year

2017-05-01

Language

English

Pages

518-536

Publication/Series

Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy

Volume

35

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Pion Ltd

Topic

  • Social and Economic Geography

Keywords

  • Innovation studies
  • economic geography
  • Innovation system
  • Industrial management
  • biogas

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1472-3425