Technological Expansions, Catching-Up Innovations and Technological Shifts at the Regional Level: Conceptual Considerations and Empirical Illustration

Anokhin S., Wincent J. and Ylinenpää H. Technological expansions, catching-up innovations and technological shifts at the regional level: conceptual considerations and empirical illustration, Regional Studies. Few techniques can capture different types of regional innovations, despite the importance of distinguishing between the innovation types for practitioners and policy-makers. This paper develops and illustrates a methodology based on data envelopment analysis that could be employed to shed light on this critical issue. Different types of regional innovations are analysed based on a longitudinal analysis of all Swedish counties over a five-year period. The approach can be used to analyse and distinguish between expansion-, catching-up- and shift-based types of regional innovation. Regional innovativeness is shown to be related to the regional levels of entrepreneurial activity.