Metropolitan Innovation Systems

Today, it is widely recognised that technological change is the primary engine of economic development. Innovation — the heart of technological change — is a process that depends essentially upon the accumulation and development of a wide variety of relevant knowledge. Certainly individual firms play a crucial role in the development of specific innovation, but the process that nurtures and disseminates technological change in the economy involves a complex web of interactions among a range of firms, organisations and institutions.

In this chapter we shall discuss the anatomy of the Vienna innovation system. We begin with a profile of the region concerned (Section 2.1) followed by a brief characterisation of the Austrian R&D system (Section 2.2) and then move on to the institutional setting of the innovation system in order to illustrate the institutions and mechanisms supporting technological innovation (Section 2.3).

This chapter provides statistical evidence on the innovation system of Barcelona. The case study region comprises the communities of Barcelones, Maresme, Valles Oriental, Valles Occidental and Baix Llobregat which, from a functional point of view, form the metropolitan region of Barcelona (see Fig. 3.1). Two thirds of the Catalan regional product comes from the metropolitan region of Barcelona, which at the same time concentrates the largest number of research institutes in Catalonia. After an overview of the economic performance and structure of the Catalan capital (Section 3.1), the Spanish and Catalan innovation system is briefly characterised in Section 3.2. Special attention is paid to the development of regional institutions. This development is a consequence of the decentralisation process introduced by the 1978 Constitution, as well as the increase in international competition following Spain’s entry into the European Community. As a result of the innovation-averse economic policy of the Franco era, the major challenge has been the transformation of the innovation system. The innovative capabilities in the business and science sector are less developed and not as well linked with each other as they are in more advanced regional economies.

The metropolitan region of Stockholm has essentially a polycentric structure in which the city of Stockholm itself, the Swedish capital, is by far the strongest player. The rest of the Mälar region can be said to constitute the hinterland of metropolitan Stockholm (see Fig. 4.1). The ample availability of land in Sweden implies that the pressure is not as large on scarce land resources for urban development as in other European metropolitan regions. Lake Mälaren is an environmental asset and a trade infrastructure, at the same time being the major supplier of drinking water to all the urban settlements in the area. For the moment there is no comprehensive physical plan that controls the future land-use in the region, which houses a number of small and medium-sized urban settlements. The hinterland of the Stockholm region used to be the core of the Swedish manufacturing industry.

It is customary for a concluding chapter to summarise the findings presented in the preceding part of the book. In this case it is a somewhat daunting task. The three metropolitan region studies that make up the heart of this volume have covered an enormous amount of material. A great effort has been made to provide consistent and comparable data for three selected metropolitan regions (Barcelona, Stockholm and Vienna). The project has in fact produced a unique resource base for the analysis of metropolitan innovation activities and potential. It differs from previous regional innovation studies in a number of ways.