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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate experimentation over time in Ontario, Canada with place-based innovation policies to support the development and coordination of entrepreneurial ecosystems on a regional basis across the province.

Tracing the policy learning process and successive adaptations in program design over time, the authors provide a detailed case study of the evolution of the Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs (ONE) from 2003 to the present.

The authors find that the program has evolved in response to regular program reviews that include broad input from ecosystem actors operating at multiple levels within the network, and that intermediaries are key facilitators of inter- and intra-ecosystem linkages. However, program complexity and coordination challenges suggest that place-based innovation policies, such as the ONE, should focus specifically on innovation-intensive entrepreneurship.

These findings make three contributions to the theory and practice of place-based innovation policy. First, these policies are by nature experimental because they must be able to flexibly adapt according to policy learning and practitioner input from a wide variety of local contexts. Second, multilevel interactions between provincial policymakers and regional ecosystem actors indicate that place-based innovation policy is neither entirely driven by “top down” policy, nor “bottom up” networks but is rather a complex and variable “hybrid” blend of the two. Finally, publicly funded intermediaries perform essential inter- and intra-ecosystem connective functions but system fragmentation and “mission creep” remain enduring policy challenges.

The paper makes an original contribution to the literature by analyzing the development of entrepreneurial policy support framework and situating the case study in the context of the policy learning process involved in place-based innovation policymaking in North America.

This study investigates whether and how place-based industrial relocation policy affects firm innovation.

By exploiting the establishment of China's National Industrial Relocation Demonstration Zones (NIRDZs) as a quasi-natural experiment in a difference-in-differences design, the authors examine the externalities of industrial policies that support sustainable development and growth from the perspectives of firms' patenting activities.

The study consistently finds that the NIRDZs policy significantly boosts local firm innovation, translating into a 60.46% increase in the patent applications of treated firms. The estimation results remain robust to a series of alternative specifications. Moreover, heterogeneity analysis suggests that the firms that benefited most were state-owned enterprises, firms with higher productivity, or firms in non-high-tech industries. Further, the authors find that the NIRDZs policy stimulates firm innovation mainly in the form of utility model patents, followed by designs and invention patents.

The results provide suggestions and implications for policymakers to improve the efficiency of state-led industrial policies and avoid “government failure” in policy implementation.

This study provides suggestions and implications for policymakers to improve the efficiency of state-led industrial policies and avoid “government failure” in the policy implementation.

This study fills the research gap by exploiting quasi-experiments to assess the effectiveness of state-led industrial policies for emerging economies. (2) The analysis sheds empirical light on how corporate innovation is motivated and financed by selective and functional industrial policies. (3) Theoretically, the results rationalize why state-led industrial relocation fuel innovation capabilities of localities from Marshall externalities and competition crowding-out effects.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between collaborative governance arrangements for place-based competitiveness and public innovation.

The paper combines a conceptual discussion of the links between collaborative governance, competitiveness policy and public innovation with a case study analysis of a specific governance process that aims at adapting policy to respond to local competitiveness challenges in the Basque province of Biscay.

The conceptual discussion leads to the hypothesis of a new distinction with respect to how governance relates to public innovation. Innovation can occur in governance, through governance or with governance. The analysis of the case supports this distinction. Multi-actor collaboration for competitiveness policymaking (innovation in governance) has led to policy innovation (innovation through governance). This has also promoted emerging administrative changes that could be conducive to a more innovative public sector in general (innovation with governance). These findings validate arguments posed by proponents of collaborative innovation that suggest that multi-actor collaboration is a driver for public sector innovation.

The value of the paper rests on linking theoretically and empirically two relevant and currently popular phenomena: networked governance for place-based competitiveness policymaking and public sector innovation. The paper provides original insights from the practice of building a process for context-sensitive policymaking that can inspire practitioners with similar problems.

The aim of this paper is to understand how systemic change agents influence the twin digital and green transitions. The authors build on agency-based theories to argue that transition pathways are influenced by a combination of place-based characteristics, the mobilisation and preferences of systemic change agents (such as local clusters), and the institutional and economic context. The conceptual framework defines the different steps of the twin transition, and it identifies how systemic change agents and geographic characteristics determine the direction and speed of the transition pathway.

This paper starts with a literature review to identify the different schools of thoughts on transition pathways and the twin transition, before developing a conceptual framework and deriving policy implications.

First, this paper argues that each transition involves three steps: framing, piloting and scaling. Each of these steps is driven by systemic change agents who engage local actors in trust-based collaboration, pool resources, create network effects and exchange information to source solutions for industry-level challenges. Second, the combination of place-based characteristics and the actions of local systemic change agents define the path of the transition and the new (post-transition) equilibrium. Finally, this paper sets out implications for policymakers who are interested in using systemic change agents to shape transition pathways in their local area.

Further research is needed to provide robust empirical evidence from a range of territorial realities for the hypotheses in this paper. Specifically, the role of systemic change agents, such as trade associations, regional organisations, clusters or research groupings, needs to be investigated more closely. These agents can play a key role in progressing the transition because they already focus on sourcing solutions to joint challenges and opportunities by exchanging information, engaging local actors in trust-based collaboration, pooling resources and fostering network effects and critical mass. Future research should investigate how policymakers can best leverage on these crucial actors to progress or steer transitions and how this varies depending on place-based characteristics. This could include, for instance, training activities, networking and collaboration (e.g. through the European Cluster Collaboration Platform) or clearer sign-posting the key next steps required for the transition.

This paper identifies specific ways in which local actors can influence the direction and speed of transitions at each stage of the transition: at the framing stage, political entrepreneurship can be fostered through collaboration and smooth information flows between different levels of governance, at the piloting stage, commercial and social entrepreneurship require effective knowledge sharing and a wide and open search for solutions which, in turn, may require capacity building at the local level and coordination across stakeholder groups and levels of governance and effective scaling up can be fostered through network effects, joint commitment from a broad range of stakeholders and pooling of resources to achieve economies of scale.

An important implication of the framework is that, if several places are undergoing a parallel or joint transition, the result may not be convergence between these places. Instead, different places may choose different end points and they may proceed at different speeds. For instance, in the context of the European Union’s green and digital transitions, it is unlikely that every region will transition to a similar level of digitisation or make steps in the same direction when it comes to sustainability.

This paper plugs a gap in understanding how systemic transitions unfold and how their speed and direction are influenced by different stakeholder groups. This paper develops a conceptual framework to define twin transition pathways and it analyses prominent place-based factors affecting these pathways.

This chapter introduces the notion of the ‘Innovation Story’ as a methodological approach to public policy evaluation, which builds in greater opportunity for learning and reflexivity.

The Innovation Story is an adaptation of the case study approach and draws on participatory action research traditions. It is a structured narrative that describes a particular public policy innovation in the personalised contexts in which it is experienced by innovators. Its construction involves a discursive process through which involved actors tell their story, explain it to others, listen to their questions and co-construct knowledge of change together.

The approach was employed to elaborate five case studies of place-based leadership and public service innovation in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Mexico. The key findings are that spaces in which civic leaders come together from different ‘realms’ of leadership in a locality (community, business, professional managers and political leaders) can become innovation zones that foster inventive behaviour. Much depends on the quality of civic leadership, and its capacity to foster genuine dialogue and co-responsibility. This involves the evaluation seeking out influential ideas from below the level of strategic management, and documenting leadership activities of those who are skilled at ‘boundary crossing’ – for example, communicating between sectors.

The evaluator can be a key player in this process, as a convenor of safe spaces for actors to come together to discuss and deliberate before returning to practice. Our approach therefore argues for a particular awareness of the political nature of policy evaluation in terms of negotiating these spaces, and the need for politically engaged evaluators who are skilled in facilitating collective learning processes.

This paper aims to test the existence of the so-called industrial district effect on innovation (iMID effect) in Spain and Italy and to compare the intensity of this effect between both countries. There is previous evidence of this effect for Spain, although, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it has never been measured for Italy.

Innovation intensity by local production system is measured using patents per million employees and analysed using the mean, the median, 3D maps and statistical tests.

Industrial districts generate between a third and a quarter of all technological innovations in Spain and Italy. The evidence about the district effect in innovation in Spain is consistent with previous studies. The novelty is that there is also evidence of this effect for Italy and its intensity is higher than for Spain. Almost one-half of the industrial districts fit in the most innovative quartile of local production systems, and they are located in the most innovative part of each country.

Limitations of this study include minor database issues. Implications include new focus on the general relevance of industrial districts as highly innovative local production systems and top innovators.

Reorientation of territorial and innovation policies.

Effect on development and well-being through technical progress.

This article provides, for the first time, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, a measurement of the industrial district effect on innovation in Italy. The paper compares the results between Spain and Italy and allows for generalization of previous evidence, concluding that highly innovative industrial districts are not “rare diamonds”, revealing as an alternative and an extraordinarily powerful place-based innovation model.

Industry 4.0 or digitization, from a regional innovation system (RIS) and policy perspective to improve regional innovation, is over-looked. Specifically, this paper aims to focus on analyzing the nascent European Commission (EC) digital innovation hub (DIH) program, designed for fostering transition into Industry 4.0 in regions and facilitating new path development.

Empirically, 10 Spanish DIH is explored through interviews and secondary data analysis.

The results suggest that DIHs despite their emerging and trial-and-error stage are designed for promoting multi-actor collaborative platforms including non-local actors to stimulate transition into Industry 4.0 by promoting place-based collaboration alliances that respond to local/regional contextual specificities and demands. These regional-based platforms facilitate public-private partnerships that co-design policy initiatives resulting from co-participation and negotiation of spatially-bounded oriented initiatives for digitizing.

The authors answer: what are the key characteristics of emerging European-level regional innovation policies aimed at facilitating Industry 4.0 in regions? This is the first study on the topic.

Many nations are focussing on health care’s Triple Aim (quality, overall community health and reduced cost) with only moderate success. Traditional leadership learning programmes have been based on a taught curriculum, but the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate more modern approaches through procedures and tools.

This study evolved from grounded and activity theory foundations (using semi-structured interviews with ten senior healthcare executives and qualitative analysis) which describe obstructions to progress. The study began with the premise that quality and affordable health care are dependent upon collaborative innovation. The growth of new leaders goes from skills to procedures and tools, and from training to development.

This paper makes “frugal innovation” recommendations which while not costly in a financial sense, do have practical and social implications relating to the Triple Aim. The research also revealed largely externally driven health care systems under duress suffering from leadership shortages.

The study centred primarily on one Canadian community health care services’ organisation. Since healthcare provision is place-based (contextual), the findings may not be universally applicable, maybe not even to an adjacent community.

The paper dismisses outdated views of the synonymity of leadership and management, while encouraging clinicians to assume leadership roles.

This paper demonstrates how health care leadership can be developed and sustained.

Despite widespread recognition of the importance of place in entrepreneurship research, much less attention has been paid to the methodological challenges that inquiries into place presents. Understanding the relationship between place and entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly important as focus turns to sustainable entrepreneurship and as policy makers turn to ‘place-based’ approaches to regional sustainability challenges. This chapter provides insight one researcher’s experiences engaging stakeholders in discussions about the relationship between a place-based university programme for sustainability and local sustainability agendas. The chapter reveals the struggles experienced by both researcher and participants in articulating what places and the local region means to both individuals and to the programme. The findings provide an important insight into how researchers studying place need to be cognisant of the limitations and flexibility of language when engaging research participants in discussing the relationship between place, sustainability, and entrepreneurship.

Place‐based innovation has become central to meeting the complex demands on contemporary public administration. Among the difficulties in introducing new practices is the gap between political authorisation and administrative implementation. This paper aims to use the emergence of new forms of place‐based public administration involved in the (re)introduction of community‐based ideas, practices and instruments into public administration to demonstrate how authorising and operationalising innovation can be addressed in practice.

The paper reviews placed‐based public administration initiatives in Victoria, Australia over a decade.

To be effective public sector innovations need both a powerful authorising environment and also a framework for operationalisation. As with private sector innovation new ideas in the public sector often need new institutional arrangements and instruments to enable their effective take up and diffusion. These new arrangements often require the “creative destruction” of previous ways of thinking and working.

This paper contains evidence of new place‐based approaches to public management, that could be of interest to other states and countries.