From competitiveness to territorial value: transformative territorial innovation policies and anchoring milieus

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a conceptual reading of the issues and theories that have cumulatively formed the backbone of current ‘innovatized’ territorial development policies. It emphasizes the broadening of a technological innovation perspective to a cultural and, subsequently, social and societal innovation perspective. While this broader perspective encourages systemic changes that are crucial in order to reach global sustainability goals, it tends to under-conceptualize how to make transformative change economically viable. The paper, therefore, develops a transformative territorial innovation policy approach focused on ‘territorial value’, which is understood as the result of locally interdependent production, consumption and living advantages in the long run. Such a policy should be based on enlarged anchoring milieus of actors engaged in place-based experiments at the nexus of export-, visitor- and household-based income systems. To do so, it should promote policy mixes that support co-innovation, entrepreneurship, sensemaking and institutionalizing across multiple scales and locations. The paper finally calls for further research and conceptualizations on territorial value and territorial valuation and for a new role of the social sciences and humanities in innovation.