Regional Innovation Systems: an application and a framework

Sammanfattning: Boosting economic growth and competitiveness in different spatial contexts such as national, regional, metropolitan etc. has always been in the epicenter of both large and small-scale planning efforts pursued at different levels of government from local to extra- regional and their significance is still, and probably will always be, on the rise given the ever increasing competition in today’s, and yet-to-come future world. In order to achieve this, relevant authorities have devised and implemented a vast variety of policies and approaches which are, more often than not, based on abundance of theoretical contributions in the field of economic geography. This thesis explores one of the main theoretical contributions to this field being Innovation Systems theory and tries to adapt the concept, originally intended for application at a larger scale, to the perspective of an individual firm rather than a whole production system while briefly using empirics from the spatial context of Adelaide/South Australia, loosely defined as a region, and the sectoral context of electricity infrastructure. The initial conclusion here is that applying the concept to the more manageable context of an individual firm, may have the potential to enable one to identify the relevant organizational and institutional setup more effectively and present a better explanatory description of their role in the whole Innovation system and in turn, can contribute to a more informed planning and policy- making process for regional economic growth.