Constructing Regional Advantage in the Austrian ICT Sector—Towards Fine-Tuned Innovation Policies?

Abstract

Regional innovation policies are often applied in a standardized way oriented at best practice models developed elsewhere. These policies fail to take specific sectoral and regional characteristics sufficiently into account. However, innovation processes and problems vary for firms in particular sectors since these exhibit distinct features dependent on their knowledge base. Also, companies are located in different types of regional innovation systems (RIS) facing specific innovation conditions. “One-size-fits-all” approaches, thus, frequently do not work. In the present paper, we are going to investigate for the information and communications technology (ICT) sector and three regions of Austria which differences exist in the innovation conditions and activities of companies and in their pattern of knowledge sourcing. We also try to find out to which extent policies are addressing such specific conditions. The regions investigated are the metropolitan region of Vienna representing an institutionally and organizationally “thick” RIS, the non-metropolitan region of Salzburg standing for “thin” RIS in this respect, and the industrial region of Upper Austria showing characteristics of a “networked” RIS. The analysis is based on interviews with 110 companies in the ICT sector as well with a number of key policy actors.