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“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

Mexico has an economic dynamic mostly associated with low added value sectors; regions of Guerrero and Michoacan highlight at national and even international levels in the agri-food production, however, they present substantial lags in their development and competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the innovation policy in the agri-food sector of these regions through its regulations and local policy.

The present work has a qualitative approach through a case study with the treatment of units of analysis (UA), in which innovation policy in the agri-food sector as main UA, whose sources of interpretation have been direct observation and documentary sources such as laws and the guiding instruments of the regional public policy on innovation and the agri-food sector.

This paper identifies severe institutional weaknesses, a lack of incentives and structures for generating certainty and innovation capabilities in the agri-food sector. Both regions have weak and poorly articulated institutions in their innovation policy, with few incentives and scarcely defined property rights tending to increase uncertainty among the actors participating in the agri-food sector, although the economic dynamics of both regions is mostly associated with that sector, therefore, the low development and lack of competitiveness are a direct consequence of a minimum priority of innovation policy.

Our research is useful for the academic sphere by contributing to applied knowledge on the implications of innovation policy at the sectoral level on the development and competitiveness of regions, particularly in an emerging country such as Mexico, allowing to generate bridges gaps between theory and practice.

The main contribution is for policymakers, allowing them to compare and facilitate a better design of regulatory and public policy instruments that enable them to address and enhance economic vocations through innovation for regional development.

The research focuses on a debate at the regional level on the institutional limitations of promoting innovation through public policy. This study approaches economic and political processes having as empirical evidence of two undeveloped Mexican regions that stand out internationally in agri-food production. These regions have sectoral dynamics inserted in global value chains but have not achieved a local articulation, which has negatively affected their competitiveness and development. The cases of Guerrero and Michoacan are examples of regions like many others, which present diverse institutional weaknesses and lack of incentives associated with innovation policy that limit the development and articulation of their territorial capabilities.

This chapter examines factors that maximize collaboration among various stakeholders with the purpose of health policy making in Turkey. The field research reveals that policy networks have been formed in the sub-areas of public health, healthcare construction, and health tourism in the years between 2011 and 2015. Content analysis of 24 semi-structured interviews with policy and professional experts is conducted to assess Network Collaborative Capacity, built upon three dimensions, namely, structural, relational, and institutional. The findings reveal that networks differ in their capacity to collaborate as well as their impact on policy making resulting in three distinct models of network policy making. In the cases under investigation, network impact takes the form of (a) policy innovation through expertise sharing and evidence-based policy making associated with particularly high levels of relational capacity; (b) policy effectiveness through contract enforcement within a clear legal framework associated with particularly high levels of institutional capacity; and (c) policy coherence through organizational-knowledge-sharing and actor coordination. Findings also suggest that institutionalization in the form of network embeddedness in the surrounding political and economic environment is crucial for maintaining a collaborative momentum as well as achieving policy effectiveness at the stage of policy implementation. Based on these findings, further studies should focus on the institutionalization of policy networks, particularly in those middle-income countries such as Turkey that aim and often fail to address various policy challenges through short-lived practices of multi-stakeholder action. Finally, this study emphasizes the importance of incorporating neo-institutional approaches to network analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the prospects of integrated planning and management of the environment in the context of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and river basin planning.

The paper analyses the legal framework of the WFD and other related water and environmental legislation as well as the provisions for integrative practice in the WFD. Moreover it analyses the potential for integration with issues that are not provided for in the WFD, such as land use. The procedural elements of the WFD and other EU legislation are analysed for identifying common elements within a modern consensus and efficiency based planning mode.

Three aspects of the integrated management framework for water and other environmental resources are highlighted. The first concerns the need for interaction between spatial land use planning and the integrated river basin management plans of the WFD, in order to ensure that land‐use plans do not contradict water goals and that water planning also takes into account broader landscape related aspects. This demands the establishment of platforms for institutional interplay. The second is the need to integrate water goals into sectoral policies. This may be ensured by activating the impact assessment procedures for projects, plans and programmes which may have an impact on water resources and quality. The third concerns elements and procedures which are common to several pieces of legislations (e.g. management plans, monitoring, public participation), and which could benefit from the establishment of common databases, spatial information systems, and methods of communication.

The paper aims to identify key issues related to integration of the WFD with other environmental EU legislation, the associated challenges posed to water management and other environmental management institutions and procedures, and the information systems and methods which may facilitate the integration.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the innovation process of organizations representing the main sectors of Brazilian economic activity.

The literature review focuses on analyzing the innovation process characteristics regarding the innovation types. The authors carried out interviews with executives and managers in charge of innovation at the leading large companies in the respective sectors analyzed. The data analysis of this qualitative research was structured in three steps. The first step is the analysis of data collected for encoding, the second step, the summarization of the common points presented by the companies in each sector and, finally, the interpretation of these data, aided by triangulation from secondary data that support the analysis of the collected primary data.

The main contribution of this study is to characterize the innovation process of organizations representing the main sectors of the Brazilian economy, with a classification regarding the sectoral innovation standard.

The authors’ intent is that the paper can contribute with a comparative analysis among companies of the same sector and, subsequently, among companies of the different surveyed sectors. Thus, the characterization aims to present the companies’ innovation process and the comparative analysis aims to verify the innovation sectoral patterns. In addition, as implications for management practice, some strategies for better knowledge management in the organization are suggested for each type of innovation.

The main theoretical contribution focuses on the development of a conceptual model that structures the analyzed variables of the constructs “innovation process” and “innovation sectoral patterns”, allowing not only the characterization but also the comparative analysis of the representative organizations present in the sample.

The common failure to give due weight to environmental and social factors creates a risk that that short‐term economic growth objectives may be traded off against long‐term objectives, such as environmental quality. This potential policy conflict may be exacerbated in the developing countries that are undergoing structural adjustment, as the associated trimming of non‐core public expenditure will typically include measures designed to manage the environment. Thus the long‐term future of the vital tourist industry might be compromised in the process of meeting short‐term public expenditure reduction targets. The solution lies partly in improved policy coherence; micro‐level prescriptions are more likely to be sustainable per se and also help to underpin a wider process of sustainable development if the appropriate policy framework is analysed and evolved integrally, as part of a coherent national plan. The need, therefore, is for an appropriate, flexible structure that could capture the business, environmental and developmental aspects of tourism.

This paper aims to assess the state of the art of quality of education, research and governance to incorporate sustainable development goal 4 (SDG 4) in Nepalese higher education institutions (HEIs). In particular, it raises questions to initiate a discourse on HEIs to achieve SDG 4.

The idea of undertaking this research is heavily borrowed from scientific literature and policy documents. It is an exploratory study that assesses the current status of quality of education, research and governance and suggests policy measures to inculcate SDGs culture in Nepalese HEIs. This study follows a qualitative approach. The analysis is based on the opinions of 113 HEIs stakeholders and high-ranked university officials. Discussions among stakeholders have been organized using online facilities such as Zoom and Team.

Nepalese universities had not incorporated SDGs in their policy, planning, budget and curriculum. The research finds that even after the government’s commitment to SDGs, HEIs are not honestly involved in academic discourse on these goals. From the conversation with university officials, it appears that Universities have understood it as a government policy for development, rather than incorporating it as their sectoral responsibility to ensure the quality of education for future generations.

This paper prescribes policies to inculcate SDGs culture practically throughout the university structure and operations and opens the floor to discourse on the sectoral role to reach SDG 4. Second, this research suggests activities and policies integrated toward the common good agenda.

The paper is the first of its type in the context of a least developed country, Nepal, to raise the issue of HEIs for SDGs. This paper also represents the situation of HEIs for SDGs of similar countries.

European spatial governance underwent substantial changes over the past two decades with the expansion of European territorial cooperation programmes, the introduction of new instruments for cooperation and an increasing role of financial and regulatory framework in sector policies. Against this background the paper develops the argument that today’s European spatial governance has become more diversified and fragmented, leading to an increasing role for sector policies, and that the cumulative effect of these diverse activities on domestic planning processes are under researched.

This paper summarises the legal recognition of spatial planning and categorises European spatial governance as being composed of spatial policies, financial instruments and governance frameworks. This paper then presents three explorative case studies: the Common Transport policy as one European Union (EU) sector policy, a cross-border cooperation supported by the European Regional Development Fund and macro-regional cooperation.

This paper concludes that the increasing regulatory impact of European spatial governance on domestic spatial planning goes far beyond the pure Europeanisation of narratives and agendas or “ways of doing things”. Furthermore, this paper illustrates that European spatial governance is characterised by a process of sectoralisation, supported by the EU’s regional policy and the provision of governance tools. The paper calls for further investigation of the interrelatedness of these processes and their reciprocal influences on planning practices.

The value lies in recognising the incremental changes that have come alongside European integration, and highlighting the importance of these processes for domestic planning processes. This paper highlights the hidden process of sectoralisation that leads to an increase in planning competences at the European level.

To answer the questions: what roles windows of opportunity act in the catchup process of latecomers, what strategies latecomer enterprises should adopt to size windows of opportunity to catch-up with incumbents even going beyond?

This paper studies the catch-up history of the Chinese mobile phone industry and proposes a sectoral innovation system under scenario of technology paradigm shifts. Then a history-friendly simulation model and counterfactual analysis are conducted to learn how different windows of opportunity and catch-up strategies influence the catch-up performance of latecomers.

Results show latecomers can catch up with technology ability by utilizing technology window and path-creating strategy. However, catching up with the market is not guaranteed. Demand window can help latecomers to catch up with market as it increases their survival rates, different sized windows benefit different strategies. However, it also enlarges incumbents' scale effect. Without technology window technology catch up is not guaranteed. Two windows have combination effects. Demand window affects the “degree” of change in survival rates, while the technology window affects the “speed” of change. Demand window provides security; technology window provides the possibility of a breakthrough for technology ability.

The findings of this paper provide theoretical guidance for latecomer enterprises to choose appropriate catch-up strategies to seize different opportunity windows.

This paper emphasizes the abrupt change of industrial innovation system caused by technology paradigm shifts, which makes up for the shortcomings of previous researches on industrial innovation system which either studied the influence of static factors or based on the influence of continuous changes.

The purpose of this paper is to critically investigate the Ethiopia’s climate change adaptation and mitigation regulatory frameworks and their congruency with the guiding principles under the United Nations (UN) Climate Convention, to show the alignment of the regulatory frameworks with the UN Climate Change rules. Rising temperatures, erratic rainfall distribution, recurrent droughts and floods require robust climate change mitigation and adaptation policies and effective implementation in the country.

Through the doctrinal legal research method, the author has used a detailed analysis of primary sources, both national and international legislative enactments. Besides, the research has benefitted from secondary sources like research reports, online publications, scientific journals, international reports, books and journal articles.

The findings reveal that in Ethiopia, there is no national climate change-specific policy and legislation. Although there are scattered sectoral climate-related policies and strategies, they are not consistent with the principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

This study argues that having comprehensive specific climate change policy and legislative frameworks consistent with UNFCCC guiding principles could help to mitigate and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change in the country.