Chapter 5 : Innovation, territories and creativity: some reflections about usual and less usual instruments for innovation-driven regional policies
Abstract
The recent decades have witnessed an increasing prominence of the region as a relevant level for innovation policy. Theoretical discussions particularly underlined this issue in the 1990s (see, e.g., Amin and Thrift 1994 ; Cooke 1997 ; Malmberg and Maskell 1997 ; Morgan 1997 ; Storper 1997 ). It started being universally accepted (and it is not a paradox) that, within the general framework of increasing globalization, regions are key sites for knowledge creation and innovation. Therefore, instruments such as territory-based clusters linking private and public (in particular academic) actors developed worldwide around the turn of the millennium. They complemented overall national instruments (sector-oriented policies, tax-credit systems, etc.) with more refi ned and focused devices. In a way, it was the discovering or re-discovering of the idea of the innovation “ecosystem.”