How Knowledge, Innovation and Place Work Together to Design Entrepreneurial Discovery Process: Insights from Maps-Led Project

The paper highlights the key findings of the research activities conducted under the MAPS-LED project, in examining how the place acquires a specific connotation in designing “tailored policy” for innovation and knowledge spill-overs. The contribution of the Project, in the current debate on the innovation policy, concerns the explanation of how territorial strategies can be part of regional innovation strategies for Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3). The MAPS-LED spatial oriented approach to US cluster highlighted the relevance of the urban dimension in concentrating knowledge resources and linking them to economic activities. The research focused on the occurrence of “innovation spaces” in the places characterized by the presence of Cluster, in order to identify specific urban areas (target areas) in which analyzing the interaction of cluster with the urban fabric, to make evident the emerging factor of a new demand of innovation-oriented physical transformation. Through the lens of the general framework of the Project, innovation spaces have been surveyed using on-line questionnaires distributed in different public and private innovation centers. The findings provide interesting insights on the role played by innovation spaces in the urban and the economic environment. Networking activities, services provided and the support of local place-based policies turn out to be key elements in spreading innovation in specific places and handler of the urban transformation demand. The quantitative approach to spatialize innovation joint with the qualitative approach through interviews led to connect Place, Knowledge and Innovation as main categories of output indicators to set the entrepreneurial discovery process as evidence-based and horizontal policy.