Jiří Blažek

Regional unemployment impacts of the global financial crisis in the new member states of the EU in Central and Eastern Europe

The article analyses changes in the regional variability of unemployment rates resulting from the global crisis, at the NUTS 3 and LAU 1 levels in the new member states of the European Union in Central and Eastern Europe. Although the coefficient of variation, the Gini coefficient and the Theil index each show a clear tendency towards convergence, in all of the states and at both of the scale levels observed, the range of variation has increased throughout the region, with the exception of the LAU 1 level in Hungary. The analysis therefore shows the ambiguous nature of the relationship between an economic crisis and the intensity of micro-regional differences or, rather, their dependence, owing to the nature and severity of the crisis as well as the statistical measures of variability. We found a number of mutual and contradictory tendencies concerning regional development during the global economic crisis in the observed countries. Based upon these findings, several groups of countries with similar changes in their regional pattern during the crisis have been identified.

Regional Innovation Policies in the Czech Republic and the Case of Prague: An Emerging Role of a Regional Level?

Abstract The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of the development of Czech innovation policy which started to get its shape in the first years of the 21st century. The article traces its origins to a number of interlinked factors—the introduction of European regional policy in the Czech Republic, the increased inflow of foreign direct investment into R&D-intensive sectors and also the devolution of power to Czech regions that were established in 2001 and gave a new, regional dimension to research and innovation policy. It pays particular attention to the process through which the regionally-based innovation policy advocated by the European Union (EU) has been translated and adapted in the context of a new EU member state. As an illustration of the efforts at the regional level to make a better use of the potential of R&D and innovation in the regional development, a case study of a regional innovation strategy of the City of Prague is analysed. The City of Prague was selected for a critical analysis of an innovation system and innovation policy due to the fact that it is a region with significant but until now not fully exploited innovation potential and, in addition, its first innovation strategy has been recently adopted. The innovation strategy is closely scrutinized and the process of its elaboration is critically examined within the European and especially national context. The authors demonstrate that there is a lot of conceptual ambiguity and confusion associated with the process of transferring the experiences of Western European regions to the Czech Republic. The authors believe that at least some of their observations and analysis of weaknesses of the process through which the regional innovation strategy (RIS) has been carried out will have relevance for other Czech regions and even for other regions in the new EU member states.

Where Does the Knowledge for Knowledge-intensive Industries Come From? The Case of Biotech in Prague and ICT in Ostrava

The primary aim of this paper is to contribute to current discussion, concerning the role of geography of knowledge sources in knowledge-intensive industries from the perspective of a post-communist country (the Czech Republic), with its specific cultural and historical heritage, as well as its specific institutional and policy context. The article analyses the extent, to which the theoretical conceptualization of analytical and synthetic knowledge bases could be relevant for the geography of knowledge sources, within the emerging ICT and biotech sectors, in two selected regions of the Czech Republic (Prague and Ostrava regions). Our findings confirm the existence of significant variation in the geography of knowledge sources, according to the type of knowledge base (analytical versus synthetic) and the type of knowledge itself (technological versus market knowledge). The article is an outcome of the international project “Constructing Regional Advantage: Towards State-of-the-art Regional Innovation Systems Policies in Europe?”.

Emerging regional innovation strategies in Central Europe: institutions and regional leadership in generating strategic outcomes

The paper seeks to develop a comparative analysis of approaches to innovation support in three self-governing regions of the Czech Republic. Its analytical section presents an in-depth analysis of the development of innovation policies in three regions: the capital city of Prague, South Moravia and the old industrial region of Moravia-Silesia. Key dimensions of regional innovation strategy in each of the three regions are closely scrutinized and critically examined, within the context of state-of-the-art European approaches to innovation policy. Profound differences, both in approaches to innovation policy design and in the results so far achieved, have been found between the studied regions, reflecting differences in both structural and soft factors in the regions in question. Rapid progress, in terms of innovation strategy implementation, is evident in a region where strong knowledge creation capacity (in both the academic and the business spheres) exists in harmony with professional and enthusiastic key personnel in intermediary institutions as well as steady political support from regional decision-makers. The authors believe that some of their observations will have relevance for innovation policy design and implementation in other Czech regions and in other regions of the European Union’s new member states.

The Biotechnology Industry in the Prague Metropolitan Region: A Cluster within a Fragmented Innovation System?

Previous research on regional innovation systems (RISs) has shown that Prague is a prime example of a fragmented metropolitan RIS. Fragmented innovation systems are characterized by a strong endowment of knowledge and innovation infrastructure elements, but they suffer from a lack of local networking, cooperation, and knowledge transmission. The aim of this paper is to investigate the nature and geography of innovation, knowledge sourcing, and collaboration in the emerging and still embryonic biotechnology industry in the Prague metropolitan region. The key questions to be answered are whether this general feature of Pragues innovation system (ie its fragmented structure and the lack of local networking) can also be found in a knowledge-intensive sector, such a biotechnology, or whether sectoral drivers are more significant and the generalized ‘local buzz and global pipelines’ model can also be applied to Prague biotech firms. Our research, in contrast to previous studies, shows that relatively intensive linkages exist within the biotechnology sector. Therefore, our results imply that an RIS, even within a single city, might be more diversified and structured than existing studies and typologies of RISs have suggested.

Can emerging regional innovation strategies in less developed European regions bridge the main gaps in the innovation process

This article considers key barriers to the process of innovation, as identified in a survey of firms and research institutions in the Czech region of South Moravia, which has been trying for more than a decade to spur innovation via successive regional innovation strategies. The article makes particular reference to the nature of newly emerging regional innovation systems in postcommunist countries and contributes to debates concerning the significance of localized processes of knowledge creation and dissemination for the competitiveness of a region. The article is based upon 188 in-depth interviews with representatives of firms and 90 interviews with leaders of prominent research teams in the region. The in-depth interviews allowed the identification of a wide array of barriers to the innovation process, which proved to be systematically related to the level of a firm’s entrepreneurial ambition. The level of ambition of firm’s strategy also translates into differing extent, to which analytical knowledge is being employed. The analysis identifies factors that are not yet adequately reflected in national or regional innovation policies and strategies, and several associated policy recommendations are set out in the concluding section of the paper.

The anatomy of difference: comprehending the evolutionary dynamics of economic and spatial structure in the Austrian and Czech economies

ABSTRACT The research on the economic convergence of Central and Eastern European countries towards the old EU members is voluminous, and it has an obvious appeal to both policy-makers and public. Unlike the traditional literature concerned with selected macro-patterns of the European convergence process, this paper presents a comparative study of two economies, attempting to comprehend more nuanced aspects and underlying mechanisms shaping their evolution. It examines the evolutionary dynamics of the structure and spatial organization of the Czech and Austrian economies since the late 1980s. Therefore, as a basis for subsequent analysis, the conceptual part attempts to systematize the key specific factors of the former command economies. The empirical results show that, despite significant similarities in the structure of these economies, the absolute and relative productivity as well as the spatial relatedness of the main types of industries reveal important differences between these two countries. These distinctions tend to be disregarded when making inferences about the European convergence process on the basis of traditional literature concerned predominantly with macro-patterns. Consequently, this study shows that since the collapse of socialism, Czechia has been reintegrated into the global economy in a different way from Austria, implying different evolutionary trajectories in the future.

The challenge of breaking the academia--business firewall in Czechia: comparing the role of differentiated knowledge bases in collaborative R&D projects

ABSTRACT Contemporary innovation processes increasingly involve a large number of networked actors, and cross-fertilization between knowledge institutions and firms has thus become a significant driver for innovation. Important insights into the differing nature of research and development (R&D) collaboration in particular sectors have been provided by research inspired by the knowledge-base approach embedded within innovation system (IS) theory. This study aims to contribute to this body of literature by applying the concept of differentiated knowledge bases to the former state-socialist countries, where the IS operates through a firewall between academia and industry. Data on collaborative R&D projects co-financed by public resources have allowed a detailed analysis of the nature of collaboration networks, revealing emerging patterns of academia–industry linkages and questioning the propositions stemming from the knowledge-based approach. The study concludes that collaborative science–industry networks show a very distinct topography when analytical and synthetic knowledge is compared.

Smart specialisation in regions with less-developed research and innovation systems: A changing role for universities?:

Universities and other knowledge institutions have quickly come to be seen as central to smart specialisation. However, their exact role in Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation has yet to receive much critical attention in the academic literature. This is particularly notable as defining features of smart specialisation – such as the entrepreneurial dynamic of the strategy-formation process, and differentiated nature of the goals for strategies in regions with varying research and innovation capabilities – represent challenges to the notion that public research organisations should be drivers of smart specialisation in all regions. This paper articulates these conceptual tensions and then explores how they are unfolding in practice with particular reference to regions with less-developed research and innovation systems. The empirical material is drawn from a European-wide survey of institutional factors affecting the implementation of Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation and two regional case studies from Central and Eastern Europe. Overall the paper reveals a multifaceted picture of still emerging (and potentially conflicting) dynamics around the introduction of smart specialisation that have the potential to reconfigure the role of universities in regional innovation systems in Europe.

Knowledge bases, R&D structure and socio-economic and innovation performance of European regions

Due to numerous idiosyncratic features, a profound variety in the level of development and in the nature of regional innovation systems is often acknowledged. This paper has aimed to contribute to existing research by unraveling mutual relationships among knowledge bases, R&D structure and innovation performance of European regions. Our analysis showed that the differences among the European regions in their prevailing knowledge base and in the absolute and relative sizes of key segments of R&D systems are systematic and mutually interwoven. Generally, advanced regions are often typified by the lowest share of synthetic knowledge base and either by a dominance of the private R&D or by a relatively balanced structure between private and public R&D, while the opposite holds for lagging regions.