This track examines innovative regions and the social conditions and institutions that make them innovative. The main research interests covered are how to encourage innovation in regions, key drivers and barriers to regional innovation and the impact on individual businesses of locating in a certain region. It seeks to explain variation in regional innovation from a multitude of perspectives, including regional culture, social capital, demographic composition and policy framework. The track is open to papers from all empirical contexts and research designs, discussing why some regions are more innovative than others. The workshop will offer a thorough discussion of each paper, offering feedback on the individual contributions as well as general insights that can be drawn from the various papers.
Please submit presentations to the Centre directly via email.
Project Manager:
Rune Dahl Fitjar, Senior Research Scientist, International Research Institute of Stavanger
Dr Fitjar completed his PhD in political science at the London School of Economics in 2007. He is the author of The Rise of Regionalism: Causes of Regional Mobilization in Western Europe, which will be published by Routledge in September 2009. He has also published articles on regionalism, regional identities and regional politics in Western Europe.
Co-Chair:
Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, Professor of Economic Geography, London School of Economics
Prof Rodríguez-Pose is Head of the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE and Director of the Spatial Economics Research Centre. He has published more than 60 scholarly articles and seven books over the last 15 years, including The Dynamics of Regional Growth in Europe (Oxford UP 1998), Local and Regional Development (Routledge 2006) and Innovation and Regional Growth in the European Union (Springer 2009).
