Adjusting to Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Institutional Entrepreneurship in Rhode Island's Knowledge Economy

This introduction has outlined the issues surrounding institutional entrepreneurship in adjusting regional economies by suggesting that the process of developing new tools for the knowledge economy is essentially a social process. An argument has been presented, which submits that by studying the social structures which accelerate or slow down the institutional learning process, the effectiveness of institutional entrepreneurship can be strengthened. This argument has been placed in a perspective that distinguishes between agency based economic development and a social mobilization approach that focuses on leveraging regional assets. Additionally, the Providence region has been introduced as a case study, which will provide examples of institutional entrepreneurship during economic adjustment. The primary investigation of institutional change in Rhode Island will fall upon the regional innovation system and the enterprise development system. The method of analysis used for this paper includes research on economic development initiatives in the Providence region based on reports as well as a series of interviews conducted with economic development professionals there over a year long period. The information gathered on the Providence region from reports and interviews will be combined with a literature review which extends across several academic fields, including entrepreneurship, economic development planning, institutionalism, enterprise development, and innovation systems. Moving forward the paper will detail the ongoing process of economic adjustment in the Providence region, while providing a theoretical background which will assist in analyzing the effectiveness of the region's cooperative social networks along with the institutional capacities that it creates.Master of City and Regional Plannin