Innovation Strategy Development For Remote, Rural And Less Favoured Regions

• This paper addresses the development of strategies to increase innovation in remote rural and less favouredregions. Many of the strategies aimed at developing innovation emanates from policy makers incentrally located urban conurbations and are assumed to be universally applicable. An example is thetriple helix model for economic development based around the idea of universities, business and publicsector organisations all coming together to foster innovation and economic prosperity.In many remote, rural and less-favoured localities there may not be a university or other knowledgeintensiveinstitution present. In fact, in some areas the public sector may also be weak and there may noteven be many local businesses operating. In those areas the social and community groups play the dominantrole.Therefore how can appropriate innovation strategies and policies be developed for remote, rural and lessfavoured regions that fully meet the needs of those areas? This question was addressed by theUNICREDS project.UNICREDS was an EU INTERREG IVC funded project including partners from remote, rural and lessfavoured regions from across the EU including the UK, Scandinavia and central Europe. The approachtaken by the project included assessments, a survey and reviews of best practice. This produced a largenumber of case studies and a wealth of insightful data on how innovation works in these regions andsuggested a new approach for future policy development in these regions.The main conclusion was that a one size fits all strategy for innovation is not effective for those regionswhose innovation system is not well advanced. For these areas much greater effort is required by policymakers to introduce locally developed processes and mechanisms that better reflect the needs of the majorregional stakeholders. Moreover, cultural and organisational innovations are also required within eachstakeholder to ensure a more effective contribution is made by universities to regional innovation processes.A new model aimed at assisting policy makers to develop innovation strategies for remote, rural and lessfavoured areas is also described.

Nyckelord

Innovation

strategy

triple helix

remote

rural

less-favoured regions.

pedagogiskt arbete

educational work

Social and Economic Geography

kulturgeografi

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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