Arne Isaksen

The unpredictable impacts of sudden shocks such as the current COVID-19 pandemic or the current energy crisis accelerated by the Russia-Ukraine war have led to a renewed interest in regional economic resilience. Much of the literature focuses attention on how regional economies and industries could bounce back, that is, how they could return to their pre-shock conditions. Other scholars have proposed to construe resilience as bouncing forward to capture the mechanisms and processes that underpin positive adaptation and structural change in response to an acute crisis. In this article, we argue that both conceptualisations do not consider shocks and crises as a window of opportunity for regional economies to transform into a radically different and more desirable trajectory. We bring a new perspective into play, that is, transformative resilience which places shifts towards more sustainable pathways centre stage. This understanding of regional economic resilience acknowledges that a crisis may bring about permanent structural change and considers to what extent these transformations are to the benefit of society and the environment. This article seeks to identify in a conceptual way what factors and dynamics are vital for enhancing the transformative resilience of regions. To this end, we draw on recent insights from the debate on challenge-oriented regional innovation systems and elaborate on the role of pre-shock conditions and various core processes in building up regional transformative resilience.

This editorial seeks to contribute to a critical rethinking of the regional innovation system (RIS) framework and to examine what kind of ‘reinvention’ of regional innovation policy is needed in the era of grand societal challenges. The concept of challenge-oriented regional innovation systems (CoRISs) is employed to cast light on how RISs can be reconfigured in response to societal challenges. Based on the articles in this issue, the editorial distinguishes between two routes into which CoRISs could be developed: RIS reorientation strategies versus RIS transformation strategies. The first strategy assumes that at least some place-specific problems that are related to grand societal challenges can be tackled by use of existing assets, actors and institutions in historically grown RISs. RIS transformation strategies go a step further. They emphasize disruption and the strategic creation of new RIS elements. These include the inclusion of new innovative actors and actor groups, the implementations of institutional change, and also the disruption of old network linkages and the establishment of new ones. The editorial also reflects on the uptake of the two strategies in different spatial contexts as regional preconditions and challenges vary, which may demand different strategies and solutions on the regional level.

Research in economic geography on innovation and regional development is an important and thriving research area in Scandinavia, which has contributed significantly to theoretical and empirical advancements beyond the Scandinavian research environments. This chapter demonstrates how the field has developed and changed its focus over the years, touching upon and developing around central academic and societal topics from deindustrialisation, clusters and regional innovation systems to creativity, green transition and changing regional development paths. The chapter focuses on how research milieus have developed in Scandinavia, how theories, methodologies and methods have advanced and how researchers have worked together nationally and internationally during the last four decades.

The purpose of the article is to analyse regions’ varying preconditions for digitalisation of industry and, on that basis, discuss regionally tailored policy strategies to stimulate digitalisation. Building on both regional innovation system and asset modification approaches, the authors suggest a theoretical framework that identifies regions’ potential for digitalisation from their stock of relevant assets at the firm and innovation system level. The analysis identifies four types of regions with different preconditions for supporting digitalisation of industries. This in turn provides the foundation for a discussion of the role of actor-based and system-based policy strategies to support digitalisation in each type of region. From the existing literature, the authors discuss empirical examples of digitalisation within each of the four types of regions but also highlight that individual regions need to tailor the portfolio of policy support within the identified strategy, as each region is structurally and institutionally unique.

This paper introduces an analytical framework for understanding how specialized and diversified regional innovation system (RIS) differ in the way an entrepreneurial discovery process (EDP) is likely to unfold. To analytically explore the proposed framework, we deploy a sequential explanatory design approach, using quantitative data to analyze the regional industry structure of the city regions of Bergen and Stavanger in Western Norway, followed by a qualitative analysis of interviews with key stakeholders in both regions. We find that the city regions face unique challenges that align with an understanding of their respective RIS categorization, providing evidence that the framework proposed serves as a useful guide in understanding the development of an EDP.

Human agency has become a core topic in economic geography complementing traditional, structural approaches to explain regional development. This paper contributes firstly with a discussion of the theoretical and conceptual relationships between the agency of individuals, organizations, and systems. Secondly, it proposes a novel analytical framework for studying how human agency, combined with external changes affects regional economic development, and how regional structural preconditions and external changes explain the activation of change agency. Thirdly, the relevance of the framework is examined through comparative studies of about 20 years of industrial development in three Norwegian regions. This illuminates the importance of human agency in regional transformation processes, how regional preconditions influence but not determine the activation of change agency, as well as why and how regional policy plays a role in the emergence of change agency. Yet, future research needs to investigate the context conditions, which promote or hinder the activation of change agency, to trace change in economic activities over time and link it to causal mechanisms, and to pay attention to the unintended consequences of change agency in the longer‐term.

The diagnosis of crisis is not unknown to the field of geography. Often, it has been the academic subject itself that has experienced difficulties, as various scientific revolutions and educational...

This article provides insights into how and where new industries emerge and grow through theoretical reasoning and the advancement of relevant arguments through empirical examples from industry emergence in two Norwegian regions: the establishment of the boatbuilding and the electronics industry in Arendal; and the cancer medicine and educational technology industry in Oslo. The article focuses on culture as an important asset for new industry emergence. We argue that industry emergence is supported if organizational culture in emerging industries and existing or altered regional industrial culture become aligned. The four industry cases demonstrate how in some situations industries emerge through a branching route, for example, related spin-offs, while in other cases they emerge through a creation route based on unrelated local start-ups or importation. We argue that an alignment of organizational and regional industrial culture is more easily achieved in the branching than in the creation route.

This paper provides a conceptual framework to understand the innovation‐based restructuring of industries in a regional context. The framework includes how firms create new assets, reuse existing assets, and overcome hampering barriers to support innovation processes. The framework also covers how such asset modifications take place at the innovation system level. A core argument is that innovation activity is strengthened and regional restructuring supported when firms’ internal assets are aligned with assets at the regional innovation system level. We illustrate the framework with empirical examples of how digitalization as an innovation process takes place in firms in traditional manufacturing industries and in local newspapers in the Agder region in southern Norway.