Strategies for Shaping Territorial Competitiveness

This book focuses on the main challenges that cities, regions and other territories at sub-national level face when it comes to designing and implementing a territorial strategy for economic development and competitiveness. There is a widespread recognition that territories need to construct strategies that focus on shaping sustainable competitive advantages. To do this they draw upon their own unique resources and capabilities alongside intelligence on existing technological and market trends. However, there is still a notorious lack of both theoretical and empirical research on this issue.The first part of this book develops a theoretical framework for understanding and analysing territorial strategy. This framework asks three questions of territorial strategy – what for, what, and how – looking closely at the key relationship between strategy and policy. The second part is dedicated to exploring this framework in practice through application to a series of unique cases from around the world at different territorial levels, from regions such as the Basque Country, Navarre and Murcia in Spain, Okanagan (British Columbia) in Canada, Wales in the United Kingdom, and the cross-border region of the Øresund in Denmark–Sweden, as well as the city of Rafaela in Argentina. Each case offers something different and enables the framework to be thoroughly tested, generating concluding reflections that add real valuefor scholars and policy-makers interested in and working in the field of territorial strategy.This volume is intended for the academic community, the policy community (government leaders, policy-makers, policy researchers and consultants) and university students and teachers at different levels interested in the areas of territorial competitiveness, regional development, competitiveness policies and processes of territorial strategy.

1. Strategies for shaping territorial competitiveness: an introduction Part 1: A framework for analyzing territorial strategy 2. Territorial strategy: Deepening in the ‘what’ 3. What is regional strategy? Lessons from business strategy 4. Territorial strategy: deepening in the ‘how’? 5. Reconciling territorial strategies goals and means: towards smart competitiveness policies 6. Evaluating territorial strategies Part 2: Cases in territorial strategy 7. The Basque Country: Past trajectory and path dependency in policy and strategy making 8. Regional competitiveness and Schumpeterian development: Policy evolution in Wales 9. Reflecting on ‘how’ territorial strategies form: The case of Rafaela, Argentina 10. Cross-bordering strategies for the Øresund Region: Different eras and institutional strategies, but unrevealed potentials 11. Regional social and economic development in the Okanagan, Canada: Envisioning the future to initiate a strategy 12. Constructing Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3): Lessons from practice in three European regions 13. Where next for territorial strategy? Concluding remarks and a call to arms

Jesús M. Valdaliso is Professor of Economic History and Institutions in the School of Economics and Business Administration at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain. James R. Wilson is a Senior Researcher at Orkestra-Basque Institute of Competitiveness, Spain, and faculty at Deusto Business School, University of Deusto, San Sebastián, Spain.