سرمایه اجتماعی منطقه ای: شبکه های نوآوری و توسعه اقتصادی منطقه ای

Technology is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for regional economic development. Regional innovation networks transform technology into competitiveness of firms and thus contribute to economic development. Intangible assets, such as social capital, decide how effective regional innovation networks function. Differences in regional social capital thus help explain regional differences in economic development. Regional social capital originates from the embeddedness of firms in regional webs of social relations. The norms, values and customs of these networks facilitate collaboration for mutual benefit. As innovation is increasingly a network effort, embeddedness and social capital also help explain how and why networks of innovating companies are successful, as the case study of the Stimulus Cluster Scheme shows.

Economics is a science that, among others, aims to explain how economic activities contribute to the creation of wealth or prosperity. In 1776, in economics' first book, Adam Smith made an inquiry into the wealth of nations. However, in explaining its first question economics also runs into its first problem, that nations, or regions, are more than merely economies. Economics is capable of explaining and predicting much of the behaviour of individual companies and it understands how individual companies create added value in terms of profits and jobs. Economics also understands that this added value of companies contributes to economic development on the level of nations or regions, but it is underdeveloped when it comes to explaining why and how. The reason behind this may actually be quite simple. Economics has individual actors or companies as its level of analysis whereas economic development is also a characteristic of nations and regions. Causal mechanisms that function on one level may not be simply translated to another level, as social factors, factors pertaining to nations and regions as societies, will be of importance too. Moreover, even though economics is increasingly open to these social factors, .e.g. institutions [1], trust [2] and social capital [3], their conceptualization in economics is still heavily informed by its traditional disciplinary focus on boundedly rational, rent-seeking and opportunism-prone individuals. The fact that most of the time human societies function decently proves that, for real humans, life tends to be somewhat more socially sophisticated than economics would like us to believe. In fact, one of the most renowned economists of our time, Paul Krugman, has argued that:

In the literature, convincing arguments are abundant that innovation contributes to economic development (e.g., [31], [16] and [33]). As argued at the beginning of this paper, innovative firms are more competitive, they create more jobs, pay higher wages and more taxes. All that serves to benefit economic development. However, the question is, who get to benefit from this economic development? This is not necessarily the home region of the innovative and competitive firms, not even if the region is rich in technology. The problem is one of levels of analysis. Economic development is a characteristic of regions whereas innovation is a process that takes place in and between firms. For the region to benefit from the innovation activities of its firms, several conditions have to be met. In the first place, regional firms must collaborate on innovation in regional networks, that is, in networks with many regional partners. Of course, these regional innovation networks will benefit from links to the global economy, but regional innovation networks are found in all developed regions [45]. Second, regional innovation networks must tap into regional sources of innovation, or tangible assets of the region. This may be in the form of linkages with regional knowledge centres — where knowledge is not restricted to merely technology. Developed regions often have at least one field of technology in which they are strong [9] and [32]. Other tangible assets that regional firms must tap into are the regional labour market and regional demand for innovative products and services. If regional customers and clients are very demanding this will trigger firms to be innovative [33] and [36]. But just how effective regional innovation networks are in turning these tangible assets into economic development depends on the region's intangible assets, i.e., its social capital. To a large extent, innovation is a process of collaboration for mutual benefit [14] and [10]. The outcome of this process depends on how smoothly firm collaborate and this is where regional social capital, as discussed in the previous section, is of crucial importance. Technology, thus, is a necessary condition for regional economic development but it is through regional innovation networks that technology is transformed into prosperity and it is regional social capital that decides how affective this transformation evolves.