COVID-Disrupted Regional Innovation Ecosystems

ongoing

The COVID pandemic continues to create the a revolution in the organisation of knowledge-intensive work, impacting all European regions. Many knowledge workers - the major driver of innovation - no longer work together in teams in the same region or building but from home in “distributed teams” and often in different regions and cities. This development has far-reaching implications for the traditional “place-based” regional innovation value chain and therefore requires that measures are taken to accommodation to the emerging innovation model. At CODIL, we believe that by adapting our innovation policy instruments, our regions can better support the distributed-team innovation model and its key component, highly skilled mobile knowledge workers. We specifically address how the revolution in the way highly skilled knowledge workers now collaborate, enabled by disruptive technology, impacts our regional innovation patterns and models; We recognise that policy choices that can attract knowledge workers are key for a successful innovation trajectory for the region; and We demonstrate how selective development of regional competences in disruptive technology can also enhance innovation performance. All this, to create innovation responsive policy instruments able to attract and retain knowledge workers in our regions and ensure the vibrancy of the innovation ecosystem.

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