Human-capital-centred Regionalism in Economic Development: A Case of

Drawing on the case of the Delaware Valley Innovation Network, a regional consor-tium funded under the US Department of Labor, the paper argues that sophisticated analytical tools developed to facilitate workforce- and occupation-led economic development are running ahead of the institution-building required to put new approaches into practice. There are two main reasons for this. First, tensions persist around the role of the public-sector workforce system in regional development initiatives. Secondly, regional stakeholders disagree about whether ‘knowledge econ-omy ’ investments should include the training of manufacturing, transport and logis-tics workers. The documentation of regional occupational specialisations, ‘talent gap ’ analyses and the clarification of career pathways are crucial components of human-capital-centred regionalism in economic development. However, best analy-tical practices are of little use without the institutional capacity to translate analysis into coherent, effective policy. Parallelling a reassertion of regionalist thinking in economic development policy in the 2000s has been an increased empha-sis on human capital as a source of innova-tion and competitive advantage. As a result, human capital has become a focus of eco-nomic development analysis and policy. Scholars, many of them funded by the US Economic Development Administration, have developed empirical techniques for investigating regions ’ occupational profiles and have proposed ways in which knowl-edge about human capital can be used to devise smarter growth strategies. While scholars and practitioners advo-cate regionally implemented policy efforts that rest on developing human capital, actual instances of such efforts remain underinvestigated. In the context of human-capital-centred regional economi