Sébastien Bourdin (p), Fabien Nadou (p)

For around a dozen years, public economic development policies have fo-cused on innovation, competitiveness and regional structuring processes that help businesses to collaborate and innovate. Many local development agencies and organisations have begun to introduce or implement support and facilitation measures. From this perspective, the “French Tech” initia-tive, launched in France in 2013, raises the question of the value added and the ripple effect that this type of public policy can have in consolidating entrepreneurial ecosystems and helping to develop innovative start-ups. The present paper shows the need for public policies to cultivate agile schemes that can draw together all the main local stakeholders by means of proximities that boost innovation and the globalisation of start-ups.

Rachel Levy (p), Geoffroy Labrouche (p)

The literature classifies agrifood as a low R&D intensive sector. Empirical studies show that firms in this sector incorporate resources from other sectors as their main source of R&D. However, literature on innovation by SMEs underlines the difficulties to access to various resources for SMEs and particularly in a rural territory context. The objective of this article is to understand which types of innovation are produced by agrifood SMEs localized in small cities. The analysis is based on the main determinants of innovation in non-metropolitan area. We focus especially on demand-side factors (opportunities) and supply-side factors (resources, capacities of individuals, attitudes). We also propose a typology of innovation produced in these small cities (radical vs. incremental, open vs. closed, eco-innovation…). In order to achieve this objective, we propose case studies of 15 innovations developed by several agrifood SMEs located in five small cities in southwest of France. We conducted semi-directive interviews in 9 firms. The choice of a qualitative methodology stems from the fact that they are particularly well adapted to cases embedded in a singular context and thus linked in particular to the characteristics of its environment. The cities were selected according to the size and function criteria that characterize small cities. Located in these cities we chose innovative firms belonging to the agrifood sector. The interview guide included three sets of questions, part of which focused on the company's innovation practices. The treatment of the interviews is processed using the Nvivo software. First, all the transcripts were coded. This coding was done in two stages thanks to a first coding phase a priori and a second phase of a posteriori coding. The first codification sought to identify verbatim relating to innovative practices. In a second step, the transcripts were coded again with a posteriori coding schemes to characterize each innovation. The exploratory study that emerges from the first coding phase allows us to confirm the specific nature of innovation processes in small cities, particularly in the agrifood sector, and to emphasize the crucial role of local business support policies, the personality of entrepreneurs and the capability to open the innovation process in order to access resources relying outside the boundaries of the firm.

Anna Golejewska (p)

The concept of Regional Innovation Systems (RIS) has developed into a widely used analytical framework which generates empirical base for regional innovation policy. The aim of the paper is to examine RIS in Poland in 2004-2016 and to classify them due to their innovation potential and technical effectiveness. The analysis is based on different data sources: published and unpublished and covers NUTS-3 sub-regions (72 units according to territorial breakdown of 1 January 2015). The unpublished data include following variables: share of enterprises which have incurred outlays for the innovative activities; share of enterprises implementing process or product innovations; share of companies collaborating in the field of innovation and share of new or modernized products in total production sold in industrial companies. It covers industrial enterprises employing more than 49 people. The data is extracted from innovation statements in industry (PNT-02).
The methodology employed in the analysis includes: exploratory factor analysis, cluster analysis and data envelopment analysis (Buesa et al. 2006, 2010). It was assumed that every region has its RIS. Systems with the highest innovation potential and effective at the same time have been recognized as strong RIS. The results show that there have been substantial differences among Polish sub-regions as regards the strength of innovation systems. Low degree of their crystallization poses a challenge for local governments. Lack of cooperation causes fragmentation of Polish RIS.