Regional Innovation Systems - An Analysis of Innovation Policy Instruments

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: Innovation is essential for the competitiveness of companies within the globalised knowledge economy. In the actual situation of high unemployment rates in most western countries public economy support works thereby actively on the improvement of innovation activity conditions. The regional level is for this attempt the most interesting spatial entity because of its high significance in global economic mechanisms. The questions motivating this master thesis are how regional innovation policy can improve a regional innovation system and which of the possible policy instruments the most effective ones are to combat unemployment. Innovations are the new combination of recent or established knowledge, whose implementation had a noticeable effect on the performance of the organisation, it was implemented in. This includes product, process, organisational and people innovations. Innovations are not anymore an individual effort but a process which involves many actors and institutions. The basis for the exploration of how to support the development and implementation of these innovations is the regional innovation system approach. It divides the innovation process into phases and their linkages and allows identifying analytically the evolved actors and the weaknesses of the innovation process. The analysis of innovation policy instruments assigns each weakness within the innovation process an instrument which is explained and analysed in detail. The examined instruments are competence centres, start-up centres, science parks, networks, regional knowledge management and diffusion agencies. Each instrument’s function and its main characteristics get described together with a best practice example, which leads to a conclusion on its effects on innovation and employment. The result of the analysis is that competence centres, start-up centres and science parks are central instruments and have the highest potential for employment effects. Networks, regional knowledge management and diffusion agencies are more supporting measures that improve the performance of the first three. For the success of all instruments, their combination with each other and the utilisation of synergies and dependencies between them is essential. A holistic concept including all instruments is the most effective way to support regional innovation processes. These findings get transferred to the case study region Bonn where, as an example for an [...]