Regional Innovation Support Systems and Technopoles - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 45

3 Regional Innovation Support Systems: A Theoretical
Framework
Technopoles should clearly be understood as part of a larger array of regional
innovation policy initiatives. Cooke ( 2001 , 22): ''… there is emerging recognition
that science parks are a valuable element but not the only or main objective of a
localised or regionalised innovation strategy''. The position of technopoles in these
wider regional innovation policies, however, differs from country to country,
depending on the relative importance of technopoles compared with the other
elements of these policies that is technological financial-aid schemes, the inno-
vation support infrastructure and cluster support initiatives and a range of other
measures (see OECD 2011 ). In Japan and South Korea, where we can find large-
scale technopoles devised and partly financed by central government, technopoles
seem to have a more prominent position in regional innovation policies than in
Germany and many other countries in Europe. In Europe, technopoles are not
frequently mentioned neither in support programmes of the European Union nor in
theoretical development concepts (Moulaert and Sekia 2003 ). Technopoles,
however, can and should be integrated in these policy programmes and develop-
ment concepts. However, no matter what position technopoles have in wider
regional policies, in all industrialised countries the dispersed networks of demand-
oriented innovation support agencies (software) and the spatially constrained,
property-led, supply oriented technopoles (hardware) seem to be quite separated
from each other.
The popularity of the concept of regional innovation systems is closely related
to the surge in regional innovation policies in many industrialised countries of the
world. This is due to the fact that the importance of the regional level is increasing
with regard to diffusion-oriented innovation support policies (Lagendijk 2011 ;
Asheim et al. 2003 , 2011 ; Fritsch and Stephan 2005 ). Central governments,
however, keep their key role in supporting basic, pre-competitive technologies,
which have spill-over effects that go far beyond the borders of regions (Storper
1995 ). Partly supported by national and supranational support programmes and
encouraged by strong institutional set-ups found in successful regional economies
such as Baden-Württemberg in Germany and Emilia-Romagna in Italy, many
regions in industrialised countries have been setting up science parks, technopoles,
technological financial-aid schemes, innovation support agencies, community
colleges and initiatives to support clustering of industries since the second half of
the 1980s. The central aim of these policies is to support regional endogenous
potential by encouraging the diffusion of new technologies both from universities
and public research establishments to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),
between SMEs and large enterprises (vertical co-operation) and between SMEs
themselves (horizontal co-operation).
This increasing importance of regions for innovation policy can be considered
as the outcome of a converging of regional and technology policy since the early
1980s (Fritsch and Stephan 2005 ). These two policy fields converged into regional