New Approaches to Sustainable Development in Clusters and Regional Innovation Systems

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue sets itself within the field of studies on economic-, social-, and environmentally-sustainable regional development facing a set of contemporary multi-scale and interrelated global challenges. Such challenges include those posed to ecosystems by resource overuse, territorial disaggregation and pollution, and biodiversity decline, but also extending to technological and globalization disruptions of productive and societal contexts, as well as more broadly to the threats to sustainable individual and collective well-being such as those prompted by the recent pandemic event.

The collection of papers will bring new evidence and interpretations on supporting and hindering factors to paths towards sustainability within and between traditional or emergent localized clusters of productive activities (local production systems). Specifically, the papers will look at cases embedded or anchored in the different places (cities, industrial districts, rural areas, etc.) and ecosystems that may constitute a regional context of territorial development (sub-national areas such as NUTS 2 regions in the EU, metropolitan statistical areas in the USA, prefectures and large cities in China, etc.).

Case-studies related to parts of the theme can already be found. These intertwine with a plurality of theoretical lenses and perspectives of research on regional sustainability including, among others, models of sustainable regional innovation systems, bio-regions, competitiveness poles, and innovative milieux; green investments and greening transitions in industrial districts, business clusters, agricultural and natural-resource innovation systems, and other models of territorial development; models of knowledge creation and institutional interrelation in social and productive systems sensible to limits and impacts of the natural environment, such as the quintuple helix, the innovation ecosystems, and the sustainability transition theories with their multi-level frames.

For more details and examples, see the Streams of Research and recommended References below.

In this context, the increasing strength of societal, technological, and environmental challenges (and prospective multiplicative impacts of the current pandemic) has generated the increased number and variety of paths pointing to sustainability transitions in local productive clusters. These must be assessed through a timely collective effort that is able to insert the cases within frames of multi-level ecosystems and social, institutional, production, and knowledge networks. Therefore, the Guest Editors welcome the submission of drafts and papers (details below) contributing novel evidence and interpretations on the theme highlighted above in Italics, under one or more of the abovementioned lens and streams of research. Specific attention will be given to papers proposing original analyses of new or evolving approaches and practices in the governance of such local paths towards sustainable development related to regional innovation systems, supportive factors, or barriers; in addition, signs of success or failure should also be considered.

The authors strongly encourage potential contributors to first submit a long abstract online within 6 months after the publication of the call. This should contain a summary of the aim, approach, methodology, and expected results of the proposed contribution. The Guest Editors will provide feedback on the submitted abstracts so as to confirm that the proposals fit within the scope of the Special Issue and to support the submission process. The fully-written manuscripts should then be submitted by the end of the submission deadline (31 January 2022).

An open set of Streams of Research

(references are illustrative, not exhaustive)

- The transformative dynamics (path renewal, creation, exhaustion) of local clusters of productive activities and their places when meeting threats and opportunities of territorial development related to sustainability challenges [1–10].

- The need to combine social and material innovation within digital (e.g., Industry 4.0) and green productive investments for fueling circular solutions and sustainability transitions played out at the local level [11–13].

- The support to sustainable transitions given by regional innovation systems (RIS) able to favor trans-local, cross-cluster, and multi-scalar resource and knowledge fertilization through networks of relevant actors [14–20].

- The creation and upscaling of multi actor, cross sectoral innovation niches capable to foster sustainable transitions [21–23].

- The relation of sustainable RIS with models of polycentric partnerships centered in helical initiatives (triple, quadruple) of hybridized agencies and innovative milieux [24–28].

- The role adopted in sustainable regional development by corporate social responsibility and shared value strategies played by local and trans-local business actors under new types and hybrid domains of business models and processes of value creation and capture [29,30].

- The role in sustainable regional development played by entrepreneurial and engaged universities (and other educational, research, and knowledge exchange institutions adopting similar or related approaches) within innovation networks [31–35].

- The role in sustainable regional development played by local and non-local civic and cultural actors intermediating the constitution of new place-based identities and stocks of social and cultural capital around local productive clusters while promoting creative communities of sustainable practices [36–41].

- The role in sustainable regional development played by place leaders favoring the translation of emergent collective demand for sustainability and health into collective action and participatory practices for the provision of specific public goods and new commons [42–45].

- The need to consider both human agency and natural life processes as drivers of local and regional sustainable development as exemplified in quintuple helix, innovation ecosystems, and place-based sustainability transitions approaches [21,25,46–48].

- Conversely, the hindering role against sustainable development played by socio-cultural, territorial, and institutional lock-in, specialization traps, thin social capital, weak or unbalanced compositions of innovation partnerships, rent-seeking and rent-preserving coalitions, power struggles within and between multi-level governance structures, and the difficulties of place-based policies, monopolistic power within productive and innovation systems, and the specific difficulties in the global South [7,9,49–57].

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Prof. Marco Bellandi
Dr. Gianluca Stefani
Guest Editors

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• green clusters
• industrial districts
• circular economy
• bioeconomy
• sustainable regional innovation systems
• innovative milieux
• territorial development
• agricultural innovation systems
• agricultural innovation ecosystems
• triple, quadruple, quintuple helix for sustainability
• multi-level approach to sustainability transitions
• engaged universities and hybrid domains of strategies of innovation
• social and material innovation in sustainability transitions
• socio-cultural and institutional lock-in
• distributive conflicts
• rent coalitions
• monopolistic power
• contemporary challenges
• pandemic crisis
• post-pandemic recovery