Beyond Path Dependency and Competitive Convergence -- Tacit Knowledge, Path Dependency and Local Trajectories of Growth -- Regional Transformation and Regional Disequilibrium: New Knowledge Economies and their Discontents -- Switching ties, recombining teams: Avoiding lock-in through project organization? -- Knowledge-intensive services as a key sector for processes of regional economic innovation: Leapfrogging and path dependency -- Entrepreneurship as a source of path dependency -- Geographical proximity and the diffusion of knowledge -- Continuities, ruptures, and re-bundling of regional development paths: Leipzig's metamorphosis -- Can less favored regions change their destiny? Lessons from Europe -- Innovation challenges and strategies in catch-up regions -- Path dependency in Baden-Württemberg: Lock-in or breakthrough? -- Rethinking regional innovation policy -- On the role of global demand in local innovation processes -- The regionalization of innovation policy: New options for regional change?.

To what extent can regions diverge from established paths of economic development? Are their futures determined by institutional and industrial structures that may be hundreds of years old or do innovations, transfers, and adaptations of knowledge, technology, learning systems, and policy mechanisms offer realistic opportunities for regional development? Rethinking Regional Innovation and Change: Path Dependency or Regional Breakthrough? brings together papers from leading international scholars in the field of regional development and policy. The contributors examine the interactions between path-dependent developments, institutions, and governance structures that influence regional innovation capacity. Using cases from both highly developed and less developed regions, they explore the complex relationships between technical and industrial development paths and regional institutions. They assess the extent to which regional innovative capacity can be increased by strengthening, re-orienting, or creating institutions and policies, and they examine opportunities for reflexive practice at the regional level as a critical tool in orienting regional development. Up-to-date case studies present diverse theoretical perspectives from economics, political science, geography, planning, and public policy. This volume will be of particular interest to researchers, analysts, and policymakers in the fields of regional development, innovation policy, and institutional and organizational change, as well as faculty and students in public policy, public administration, planning, geography, regional economics, and economic development.