A small number of wealthy regions in the world’s richest countries have been responsible for a third of the growth between 1995 and 2005.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of the developed countries, in a report Regions and Innovation Policy said the richest 4% of regions accounted for one-third of all OECD growth over the 1995-2005 period.
Half of all research and development (R&D) investment and patenting in the OECD area centred in the top 13-20% of its regions, the report added. The Massachusetts region in the US led with 5.5% of business enterprise R&D expenditure as a proportion of gross domestic product.
Rolf Alter, director of the OECD’s Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate, said: "Sustainable growth at the regional level is now, more than ever, predicated on the capacity to innovate, Boosting innovation capacity in the regions that are not at the top is now vital."
Countries are using a wide variety of regional development models for boosting innovation, with a general trend toward greater coordination of public funds at the regional level. In Belgium, Germany and China, regions are now responsible for at least 50% of public R&D-related spending, and the share has been growing over the past five years in most other countries, such as Switzerland’s New Regional Policy or the US Federal Government’s inter-agency emphasis on regional innovation clusters.
The OECD recommends governments should: Make innovation central to regional development policies and spend efficiently and reduce the potential for wasteful redundancies by co-ordinating innovation policies and instruments across all levels of government.
It added that regional innovation strategies should: define, monitor and evaluate success; address economic areas (like the trans-border Öresund region between Denmark and Sweden), and not just administrative regions; recognise regional roles in the complex global networks that support innovation; and better leverage private sector expertise and funds.
The Executive Summary (English and French versions) and short notes on regional innovation policies for 21 selected countries are available at: www.oecd.org/regional/regionsandinnovationpolicy