Innovation systems and regional resilience: A network analysis

Abstract

European regions face several social and economic challenges. To overcome these challenges, each region needs to identify priority domains that promote innovation dynamics and represent competitive advantages for development and regional resilience. The innovative dynamics of a region largely depends on existing actors and their connectivity, so that the resilience of a given innovation system can be analyzed through the study of innovation networks. This article studies the case of Algarve, a peripheral region in the south of Portugal, through the use of Social Network Analysis. The results facilitate the identification of thematic groups of priorities for smart specialization and potentialities for the system improvement and suggest that the public policies must make efforts to stimulate the cooperation for the innovation, avoiding an excessive concentration of resources and the prominence of specific actors.