Kati-Jasmin Kosonen

Strategic adaptation to the knowledge economy in less favoured regions: a South Ostrobothnian University network as a case in point

Today, the study of regions is central to academic analysis and policy deliberation on how to respond to the rise of the knowledge economy. Regional Economies as Knowledge Laboratories illustrates how newer types of regional analysis – utilising scientometrics, knowledge services measures and university networks, and concepts such as knowledge life cycles, experimental knowledge creation, and knowledge ethics – are leading to a perception that regional economies increasingly resemble knowledge laboratories.

Local or Digital Buzz, Global or National Pipelines: Patterns of Knowledge Sourcing in Intelligent Machinery and Digital Content Services in Finland

In regional innovation systems (RIS), there is a need to identify the knowledge bases that firms draw upon and differentiate innovation policies accordingly. From this premise, the main aim of this paper is to compare two Finnish industries, intelligent machinery and digital content services, that draw upon different kinds of knowledge bases. The three main research questions discussed here are as follows: (a) do knowledge sources of the firms representing two different industries with two different knowledge bases differ from each other, and how; (b) how do the knowledge sources differ between different types of RIS and (c) what kind of extra-regional pipelines do the three different cases have? The RIS under scrutiny represent fragmented metropolitan (Helsinki metropolitan area), old industrial (Tampere region) and organizationally thin (South Ostrobothnia) RIS.

Customized innovation policies and the regions: digital content services and intelligent machinery in Finland

This paper poses the question of whether innovation policies are customized to meet the varying needs of different regions and industries. The research questions are: (a) are the investigated innovation initiatives context sensitive and customized to the prevailing innovation problems and, hence, to what extent do they focus on overcoming specific bottlenecks in the particular regional innovation system and address system failures hampering innovation; (b) have innovation policies aiming to support specific industries recognized the differences and, if yes, have they been customized accordingly? The paper discusses emerging forms of local/regional innovation policy using, as cases in point, Finland and especially two different industries (intelligent machinery and digital content services) in three different kinds of regional innovation system. The empirical research is based on data gathered (a) through 40 interviews with Finnish innovation policy makers and (b) through 91 structured interviews with firm representatives; (c) in addition, interview data from another study with 53 national-level innovation policy makers are exploited. The empirical analysis shows that, in spite of a shared understanding about the generic principles of the innovation policy and the investigated local/regional policy, initiatives are clearly customized to serve the current challenges of the specific regions and industries.

Varieties of Innovation and Welfare Regimes: The Leap from R&D Projects to the Development of City-regions

In the varieties of capitalism, welfare capitalism, and systems of innovation literatures, the university is a critical actor as public employer, trainer and provider of several public goods. However, there is relatively weak enquiry into the spatial and institutional characteristics of university-led economic development and a relative neglect of the political economy and organizational features of embedded R&D projects in urban and regional planning. We argue that technical projects, far from being stand-alone entities, have taken on the broad characteristics of the university and city-regional development mandate in where they reside. The article is based on an exploratory study of university–industry R&D projects in six city regions of Finland. We show that: (a) the shifting role of universities reflects a changed context for the welfare state in which the “public” debate occurs; (b) These create distinct issues of legitimacy and coalition-building in local economic planning which give rise to diverse regional interpretations of single technology programmes; (c) We categorise three general types of models of R&D projects in universities and propose tentative categories of contributions to “public knowledge”. This diversity of interpretations and outcomes leaves us optimistic regarding the ability of city-regions to adapt and plan for the future against a changing welfare state that shapes the universitys role, yet more cautious about any clear-cut “public knowledge” emerging from such technical projects.