Regional innovation strategies in the EU or a regionalized EU innovation strategy? Conceptual and empirical underpinnings of the EU approach

This article explores the conceptual and empirical underpinnings that characterize the EU approach to regional development policy. It shows how the systemic approach to innovation has been unanimously embraced in a context in which regional research and technology development and innovation strategies have been progressively promoted as the privileged way to promote competitiveness and growth both at regional and EU levels. There are, however, many grey areas, tacit underlying assumptions and unresolved contradictions that make it difficult to draw operational policy recommendations from this 'dominant' approach, which is, in fact, best used as an analytical notion rather than as a normative tool. The paper evokes some stylized facts from the experience of the Mid Term Review of the 2000-2006 Community Support Framework for Italian Objective I regions to illustrate the arguments put forward.