European Parliament

This paper discusses the feasibility and dilemmas in stimulating high-tech clusters in regions characterised by low-tech production. In the last decades cluster policy have become central features of policy promoting growth on both the regional, national and European level. Many regional and national government’s policies are aimed at imitating the success of the well known clusters, such as Silicon Valley and others. However, the effectiveness and appropriateness of transferring experiences from other regions is debatable. In particular, innovation policy is likely to be inefficient if a ‘one-size-fits-all ’ approach is adopted (Tödtling and Trippl, 2005). It is essential that the policy approach takes into account the abilities of the region and the degree of systemic innovation in the regions, that is, to which extent institutions and actors are interlinked (Cooke, 2001). Peripheral regions and high-tech urban areas differ in this respect. Additionally, less favoured regions often have poorly developed social capital (Morgan, 1997), and often lack large firms work as drivers of clusters. This emphasizes the need to focus on the carriers of the cluster policy. When policy is to a large extend about stimulating collective learning processes and building social capital, then the key issues for policy become very much about human capital in both the ‘supply ’ and ‘demand ’ dimension