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This study aims to exploit the abundance of solar energy resources for socioeconomic development in the semi -arid Northeastern Brazil as a potent adaptation tool to global climate change. It points out a set of conjuncture factors that allow us to foresee a new paradigm of sustainable development for the region by transforming the sun’s radiant energy into electricity through distributed photovoltaic generation. The new paradigm, as presented in this essay, has the transformative potential to free the region from past regional development dogma, which was dependent on the scarce water resource, and the marginal and predatory use of its Caatinga Biome.

The research uses a pre ante design, following the procedures of scenario building, as an adaptation mechanism to climate change in the sector of energy generation and socioeconomic inclusion.

The scenarios of socioeconomic resilience to climate change based on the abundance of solar radiation, rather than the scarcity of water, demonstrates its potential as a global adaptation paradigm to climate change.

The developments proposed are dependent on federal legislation changes, allowing the small producer to be remunerated by the energy produced.

The proposed smart grid photovoltaic generation program increases the country's resiliency to the effect of droughts and climate change.

As proposed, the program allows for the reversion of a pattern of long term poverty in semi-arid Northeast Brazil.

The exploitation of the characteristics of abundance of the semiarid climate, i.e. its very condition of semi-aridity with abundant solar radiation, is itself an advantage factor toward adaption to unforeseen drought events. Extensive previous research has focused on weighting and monitoring drought i.e. the paradigm of scarcity. The interplay between exploiting Northeast Brazil’s abundant factors and climate change adaptation, especially at the small farmer levels constitutes a discovery never before contemplated.

The paper aims to evaluate the knowledge-based urban development (KBUD) dynamics of a rapidly emerging knowledge city-region, Tampere region, Finland.

The paper empirically investigates Tampere region’s development achievements and progress from the knowledge perspective.

The research, through qualitative and quantitative analyses, reveals the regional development strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Tampere region.

The paper provides useful suggestions based on the lessons learned from the Tampere case investigation that could shed light on the KBUD journey of city-regions.

This study aims to explore the spatial distribution characteristics and spactial reciprocity between industrial parks (IPs) and vocational education parks (VEPs): agglomeration density, functional matching, spatial organization efficiency, as well as space intensive utility. To achieve this objective, IPs and VEPs in urban centers of Jiangsu Province are selected as the objects of the study. First, spatial analysis of thermodynamic diagrams is employed in this study to qualitatively analyze the evolutionary characteristics of the spatial distribution of IPs and VEPs to explore the spatial aggregation characteristics of their clustering, integration, and comprehensive crossover. Second, a horizontal comparison of the data and indexes concerned reveals that areas with high agglomeration and functional matching exhibit a sound spatial reciprocity. Third, this study crystallizes the four structural prototpye paradigms formed during the reciprocity evolution between IPs and VEPs; it compares spatial organization efficiency, with the agglomeration–core structure ranking first, followed by the circle–core structure. Finally, SPSS is used to analyze the space intensive utility in order to verify the conclusions of qualitative analysis. The findings can comprehensively explain the regularities of the spatial distribution and reciprocity between IPs and VEPs. The findngs can also elucidate the design of regional industrial development and educational programs.

This study aims to explore the influence of a region’s network location characteristics and indirect connections on its innovation capability. The aim is to assist regions in different network locations to use innovation resources to improve their innovation capabilities more efficiently.

This paper represents the Chinese regional innovation network using the gravity model. A theoretical framework is developed to explore the relationships between a region’s innovation capability and its network location. Hypotheses are tested using hierarchical regressions.

First, this paper finds that a region’s network centrality can promote its innovation capability. Second, a structural hole can positively adjust the relationship between a region’s centrality and innovation capability. Third, a region’s indirect connections can inhibit its innovation capability while exhibiting a U-shaped relationship in moderating centrality and innovation capability.

This study uses a multi-index system to construct an innovation network covering 29 regions in China. This network represents the innovation cooperation and overall situation of innovation in China. The paper is one of the first attempts at investigating the relationship between regional network locations and innovation capability. It is also the first attempt at testing the influence of indirect connections on a region’s innovation capability. The findings provide a new perspective on the factors influencing regional innovation capacity and a new way for regions to improve their innovation capability.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt a holistic diversity lens with the aim to enhance the understanding of the multifaceted paradigms for diversity management at the tertiary level.

This contribution takes the inspiration of existing diversity paradigms used in business settings and relates them to higher education. It then articulates them in greater depths in line with the diversity segments of the so-called higher education awareness for diversity wheel and seeks a common denominator that may be shared across disciplines by adding an eclectic and context-specific approach.

It was identified that the underlying assumptions which constitute the commonly known diversity paradigms are only partially applicable for the tertiary level. It is further suggested that in view of the highly dynamic kaleidoscope of higher education institutions, multiple, at times conflicting rationales for diversity management need to be addressed.

This paper seeks to address the paucity of studies with regard to diversity management at the tertiary level. By drawing on relevant paradigms and relating them to specific diversity segments, this study intends to make a meaningful scholarly contribution to the existing body of knowledge.

The global knowledge economy has put the focus on the regional aspects of economic growth. It has also shifted development perspectives from output to input factors as production has become more knowledge‐based. Researchers have sought a better understanding of how firms, universities and government institutions deploy their core resources and competencies and interact to accrue economic growth. The “Region's intellectual capital benchmarking system” (RICBS) is a strategic assessment methodology designed to tackle these issues. It also aims to avoid potential lock‐ins and other institutional inefficacies that have proven pernicious, especially to developing countries' economic growth and development prospects.

Harvests on national/regional innovation systems theoretical framework and Viedma's methodology to evaluate the microclusters' capacity for competitiveness.

Building a region's innovation capacity demands an integrated and comprehensive framework to understand its underpinnings at all three micro, meso and macro levels. It is just as important to fulfill the requirements for its overall effectiveness – i.e. an in‐depth diagnosis of the region's economic, technical and institutional foundations and the key stakeholders committed to a long‐term vision, as well as a systematic and critical evaluation of the whole.

Provides development agencies with a tool for promoting innovation‐based policies and thus a more competitive allocation of resources.

Assumes that benchmarking can contribute significantly to grounding the analysis of a region's innovation and competencies building capacity and to allocating resources more effectively within the economy. It also focuses on the potential of an evaluation system to overcome undesirable lock‐ins and path‐dependencies.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss communicative problems and perspectives in the branding‐process of a metropolitan region. It pursues the question of how intended place politics and non‐intended socio‐spatial developments impact the process of place branding for Germany's capital region Berlin‐Brandenburg. The metropolitan region is here discussed as a special type of place identity. This type follows wider trajectories. There seems to be a lack of knowledge in how to manage a metropolitan identity.

The paper focuses on theoretical and practical perspectives of metropolitan place branding. A methodological approach to this case with the research approach public branding was developed by the Leibniz‐Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning (IRS) in Erkner, Germany.

Berlin, as an urban space of international significance, continues to stand in a direct spatial and functional relation to the structurally weak areas of the surrounding federal state of Brandenburg. As a consequence, the most diverse array of trajectories, resources, infrastructures, lifestyles and spatial interpretations demand new answers for place branding in metropolitan regions as future spaces of identity. The providing and conceptual integration of intermediaries in the field of knowledge‐based institutions plays a fundamental role in the spatial arrangement.

The paper asks for the preconditions to generate public brand‐knowledge. This knowledge is seen as the key factor for communicative re‐constructions and for identity building in disparate social spaces.

The deliberations try to give answers to the discussion of how far metropolitan place branding, as a worldwide future marketing prospect, can integrate old and new conceptual ideas about handling metropolitan disparities. The deliberations also implicate the question to what extent persuasive strategies for metropolitan brands have to observe limits. In this understanding, the paper gives five recommendations for place managers.

Processes of identity formation in social spaces follow certain comprehensive strategic paths and local particularities, whose concurrence becomes an object of metropolitan branding.

A relationship between governance and branding discourses within spaces of identity is discussed. It is here a matter of the fundamental question, namely, under which internal conditions social actors develop a spatial brand in a metropolitan region.

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.