Regional Innovation in Europe: A Multidimensional Approach

Abstract

Innovation is essential for the competitiveness and prosperity of regions. The appropriate measurement of innovation is of crucial importance in order to design suitable policies to foster innovation and regional growth. However, current approaches to measuring regional innovation neglect the multidimensionality of the innovation concept. In this context, the present analysis extends the multidimensional approach to evaluate regional innovation by Siller et al. (2014) to a set of 196 European regions. This is accomplished by combining original innovation indicators from the Community Innovation Survey and Eurostat with data from the Regional Innovation Scoreboard. The applied methodology allows a comprehensive analysis of regional innovation performance at the European level based on three independent dimensions, i.e. Technological Innovation, Commercial Viability of Innovation, and Service Innovation. The classification of regions in innovation regimes based on their performance with regard to the different innovation aspects identifies territories pursuing specialized innovation strategies, regions with strong performance on more than a single aspect, as well as regions with low overall innovation activities. The differentiated evaluation of regional strengths and weaknesses may contribute to designing better targeted innovation policies and may thus be profitable for regional policy making.