Innovation-driven models (e.g. Industrial District, Milieu Innovateur, Learning Region, Smart Specialization, Regional Systems of Innovation) have been a source of inspiration for regional development strategies and related... [ view full abstract ]
Innovation-driven models (e.g. Industrial District, Milieu Innovateur, Learning Region, Smart Specialization, Regional Systems of Innovation) have been a source of inspiration for regional development strategies and related public policies. Additionally, sustainable development (SD) is a concept that has been widely used in political discourse as a desired outcome for regional development. Reinforced by the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development (mainly Goals 8 and 9), it can be said that SD is seen as an inseparable framework for innovation-driven models for regional development. However, there is a lack of evidence of if and how the literature on territorial innovation models recognises or debates SD goals. The aim of this research is to identify, explore and discuss how SD has been addressed in the academic literature regarding innovation and regional development, through an integrative literature review. An academic literature search engine was used to identify relevant scholarship in peer reviewed journals, using less developed regions of the European Union as a case studies. The defined search terms included in the title, abstract and keywords of the documents were “less developed region”, “less favoured region”, “lagging region”, low growth region” and “low income region”. Subsequently, a manual screening phase was done to select papers that complied with two criteria to be included in the review: 1) focusing on a European less developed region; 2) focusing on any kind of innovation models or regional development topic. The next step focused on the content analysis of the selected literature using an inductive process of open coding, derived from categorisations drawn from the data itself. The initial search retrieved 129 articles in total. The screening process reduced the number of articles to 105. The preliminary results show that SD is not explicitly addressed in most of the papers. Only a few papers addressed SD as an outcome of a territorial innovation strategy or as an approach to develop integrative strategies leading to a change of mind-set and paradigm. Nevertheless, some arguments used in those papers can be implicitly linked with sustainability, namely, the promotion of social relations and community empowerment, and the sustainable use of endogenous resources. Overall, the research showed that SD (mainly environmental and social concerns) is still poorly addressed in the proposed innovation models for less developed regions in the European Union, with a predominant focus on economic and institutional factors.
Keywords: Sustainable development; Regional development; Innovation Models; Less Developed Regions; Europe.
6b. Urban and rural development
