The promotion of innovation in regional policy: proposals for a regional innovation strategy

This paper argues that given the correlation of innovation and R&D efforts with regional economic development, closing the inter-regional ‘technology gap’ in the European Union, which risks further widening, becomes a pre-condition for reducing the ‘cohesion gap’, which is the primary objective of regional policy. Therefore regional policy should increasingly concentrate its efforts in the promotion of innovation if it is to be successful in creating the conditions for a sustained (and sustainable) economic development process in less favoured regions. Hitherto, support for the promotion of Innovation in the less developed regions has been generally inadequate in quantity and quality to meet their economic development needs and it has not been adapted to the specific characteristics of the process of Innovation in different regional contexts. The inadequate intensity of the Innovation effort by the public sector and particularly by the private sector, and its poor adaptation to the specific needs and, conditions in the less developed regions (due to a lack of understanding of the innovation process at the regional level) helps increase the ‘technology gap’ between regions and tends to perpetuate or even increase the ‘cohesion gap’. The author argues that one practical way to approach this problem may be to encourage regions to develop regional Innovation strategies. These strategies should aim at promoting public/private and inter-firm cooperation and creating the institutional conditions (consensus among the key regional players) for a more efficient use of scarce public and private resources for the promotion of innovation (bigger and better spending in this field through regional policy).