Spatial Innovation Systems: Theory and Cases—an Introduction

The origin of this special issue goes back to several workshops, symposia and conferences, (co-)organized by the guest-editors in the past years. After having organized a first 1-day conference about learning regions in 1998, we decided to organize more workshops and seminars focusing on several sub-themes related to the learning region topic. Earlier publications can be found in special issues of European Planning Studies vol. 12, no. 5 in 2004 and vol. 13, no. 8 in 2005. To be more precisely, this special issue is a result of a combination of several scientific events; a bi-national seminar of Economic Geographers in June 2005 in Wesel, Germany, a joint interest in innovation studies from a technical university, a spatial economic and organizational department of Tilburg University and a geographical department of Radboud University in Nijmegen and several individual studies from a variety of authors. In this way an interesting mix of disciplines is brought together concerning the exciting field of spatial innovation. In fact the topic of political competence at the spatial (regional and local) level has proven to become a very important issue as economic development responsibilities are devolved from the central to the regional and local levels to a much greater extend. In other words one could say that the regional level is now much more perceived as an important arena in which to design and deliver policies to foster innovation. From the following paragraph of the green paper on Innovation of the European Commission in 1995, this will be underlined once more: