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Abstract(s)
Today, Europe is in a delicate situation. Contrasts of growing competition and the lack of capacity to overcome challenges from the recent economic turbulence in specific regions and countries have created a sense of urgency to reflect on member-states cohesion. Questions arise regarding the diverse regional economies that compose the European Union (EU) and what this diversity means for adaptation to external shocks, resistance to negative impacts and evolution to new sociotechnical regimes. Essentially, academics, planners and decision makers are looking for a way to increase the resilience of the EU territory. Resilience can be understood as a non-equilibrium characteristic that facilitates a socioeconomic system to recover from a negative impact by reshaping a former trajectory or by adapting a new trajectory that successfully deals with the external pressures. These processes and characteristics have been studied in the recent past by regional scientists seeking to identify the set of dynamic conditions that create a more or less resilient territory. In the regional context, resilience is a concept adapted from the study of ecological systems and other fields of science that is applied to the understanding of geographically embedded socioeconomic systems. It is often a characteristic connected to a threshold of socioeconomic variety and specialisation that facilitates a smooth adaptation to the challenges faced in territories. With the recent crisis, some regions have dealt with this concept, by planning the adequate conditions for resilience. Regional resilience has also been connected, but not fully integrated in the literature, with more stabilised concepts, such as innovation and creativity (Pinto & Pereira, 2014). Innovation is often assumed as crucial for resilience. It was a central notion for the EU s policies in the last decade and it was also very influential in science and technology (S&T) studies. In particular, innovation systems have been used as a framework to develop and implement policies in transnational, national, regional, local, and even sectoral contexts (OECD, 2005). An innovation system focuses on a specific area or sector, where a group of actors is interconnected, with the goal to innovate. The core of the system has the main function of innovation but also has a broader ambition for growth and development. Hence, when analysing the innovation system it is important to understand actors and linkages that are directly connected to S&T infrastructure but also the institutional architecture and a vast group of building blocks that are in the centre of the socio-economic profile of the territory, providing the range of possibilities for adaptation and evolution.
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Regional economics Regionalism
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Publisher
Cambridge scholars publishing
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Without CC licence