Territorial patterns of innovation: a taxonomy of innovative regions in Europe

The recent policy approach to innovation calls for thematically/regionally focused innovation policies in line with the place-based approach (EC – Commission of the European Communities, 2010). To achieve this goal, without incurring the unrealistic situation of having one policy action for each European region, a sound taxonomy on innovative European regions is required. The present paper claims that the existing taxonomies are somewhat unsatisfactory, since either they group European regions only on the basis of the intensity of their knowledge production, taking it for granted that knowledge equates to innovation, or they lack a priori on the conceptual links among the variables used, and the territorial conditions behind local innovation modes. The paper presents a territorial taxonomy of innovative regions based on a new conceptual approach which interprets, not one single phase of the innovation process, but the alternative modes of performing the different phases of the innovation process, highlighting the context conditions that accompany each “territorial pattern of innovation.” The paper conceptually derives different territorial patterns of innovation and identifies them empirically for European regions.