Territorial Patterns of Innovation: An Inquiry on the Knowledge Economy in European Regions

It has often been said that Europe lacks innovation and competitiveness in comparison to countries such as the US and Japan and, more latterly, emerging countries like China and India. For this reason, a clear strategy has been developed to reverse this impression; one defined in the Lisbon and Luxembourg Ministerial meetings of 2000 and 2005 the aim to engage the European Union to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world. The resultant initiatives and policy responses have largely been located in the context of European or national economies, but in recent years, it has become increasingly evident that the same reasoning should have been applied at the territorial or regional level. Clsuters of technologically advanced firms can be found in Baden-Württemberg in the south of Germany, Jutland in Denmark, Småland in Sweden and Sophia-Antipolis close to Nice in France all providing rich evidence of the gains to be made at the regional level. This book supports this trend further by providing a descriptive analysis of the spatial pattern of the knowledge economy in Europe and suggesting a new conceptual framework to interpret regional knowledge and innovation development.