Prof. Artem Korzhenevych (p), Sabine Philipps, Franziska Görmar, Dr. Katrin Martens

A growing body of literature highlights that sustainability transfromation is driven by actors who assume specific agency roles. Among these, leadership and intermediation have received increasing attention in transformation and regional development studies. Transformative leadership refers to practices through which actors articulate visions, mobilize others, and challenge established routines and power relations (Wolfram, 2016; Grillitsch and Sotarauta, 2019). Intermediation, by contrast, emphasizes the role of actors who connect heterogeneous stakeholders, translate between knowledge domains, and facilitate collaboration across institutional and sectoral boundaries (Lord et al., 2025; Sovacool et al., 2020; Sundqvist and Tuominen, 2024). While both roles are widely recognized as important, their concrete practices and their contributions to collective transformative processes remain insufficiently integrated into existing frameworks.
This paper addresses this gap by explicitly bridging the concept of collective change agency with the transformative capacity framework. We argue that leadership and intermediation can be understood as distinct but complementary manifestations of local agency that contribute to the development of transformative capacity through specific practices. These roles can also be executed simultaneously by the same actors (De Haan and Rotmans, 2018). Building on existing literature, we derive a set of leadership and intermediation practices and examine how these practices relate to key collective processes associated with transformative capacity, namely system analysis, foresight, experimentation, innovation embedding, and monitoring (Wolfram, 2016).
Empirically, the paper draws on a comparative study of two rural regions in Germany, focusing on the so-called Local Action Groups (LAGs) within these regions. LAGs are collective bodies managing the formulation and implementation of rural development strategies under the EU’s LEADER approach ("Liaison Entre Actions de Développement de l'Économie Rurale", meaning "Links between activities for the development of rural economy"). These organizations are particularly well positioned to enact both leadership and intermediation, as they operate at the intersection of policy, civil society, and local economic actors (Bosworth et al., 2016; Esparcia et al., 2015; Lacquement and Raynal, 2013). By analyzing how different agency practices align with observed collective processes in each region, the study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how transformative capacity is built in rural contexts.

Mr Luigi Apuzzo (p), Prof. Stefano Usai,, Dr. Francesca Ghinami

The transition towards a circular economy (CE) has emerged as a central pillar of sustainable development strategies in Europe. However, despite the growing policy relevance of circular transformation, there is limited empirical evidence on the territorial factors that drive the emergence and spread of circular innovations. This paper investigates the regional determinants of circular economy innovation across European NUTS 2 regions, focusing in particular on the role of technological complexity and relatedness within regional knowledge bases.
Innovation output is proxied by circular patents, which are identified using a new automated landscaping approach applied to PATSTAT data. This approach is based on a three-phase mixed-methods process: seed selection, seed expansion, and semantic pruning. Patents are geolocated at the NUTS2 level, enabling comprehensive mapping of circular inventive activity across regions and over time. The empirical analysis is conducted within a knowledge production function framework, where the main explanatory variables include a knowledge complexity index and the average relatedness density to the CE domain.
This study examines whether regions with more complex and diverse technological structures are better positioned to generate circular innovations. Furthermore, a spatial econometric approach is implemented to account for interregional knowledge spillovers and spatial dependence. This allows us to assess whether circular innovation dynamics are influenced by not only internal capabilities, but also geographical proximity and cross-regional linkages. By integrating complexity theory, diversification and spatial analysis, this paper makes a valuable contribution to the literature on the circular economy and regional innovation systems. It provides new empirical evidence on the structural and spatial factors shaping the geography of circular innovation in Europe. The findings have important implications for designing place-based strategies that foster a more inclusive, capability-driven circular transition across European regions.

Prof. Maria Tsouri (p), Prof. Simon Norheim Colclough

This paper investigates the evolution and geography of technological knowledge within the Global Value Chain (GVC) of a mixed-technology industry, focusing on European aquaculture. In GVCs, technological capabilities are typically concentrated in core economies hosting lead firms and advanced innovation systems, while peripheral regions tend to specialize in lower value-added activities. Recent research on mixed-technology GVCs highlights the coexistence of high- and low-tech segments within the same value chain, generating asymmetric knowledge flows shaped by institutional contexts and power hierarchies. From an evolutionary economic geography perspective, however, these asymmetries are dynamic and may shift through processes of path dependence, related diversification, and knowledge recombination—particularly during periods of green and digital transition.

The aquaculture industry provides a compelling empirical setting. Technological leadership is concentrated in Northern and Western Europe—especially Norway, Scotland, and Denmark—where vertically integrated firms, strong research institutions, and coordinated public-private innovation systems support upstream innovation in breeding, feed, digital monitoring, and disease management. In contrast, Southern and Eastern European regions focus more heavily on grow-out farming and processing, often within fragmented innovation systems and with lower R&D intensity. This uneven geography raises the question of how green and digital transitions reshape the spatial distribution of technological knowledge and enable (or hinder) functional upgrading within mixed-tech GVCs.

To address this question, we constructed a novel patent dataset covering aquaculture-related patents with at least one inventor located in Europe (EU, UK, Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland) between 2000 and 2024. Patents were classified into five technological foci—Feed, Production Systems, Management and Monitoring, Veterinary Care and Disease Management, and Breeding and Genetic Improvements—based on Cooperative Patent Codes (CPC). These were further attributed to three upstream value chain segments: Inputs & Services, Production, and Processing & Value-adding.

Using country- and region-level matrices and Social Network Analysis across five non-overlapping periods, we mapped the spatial evolution of technological knowledge networks at European and global scales. Preliminary findings indicate increasing participation of new entrant countries and regions, particularly in environmentally oriented technological trajectories, suggesting that green transition dynamics may open new pathways for repositioning within aquaculture GVCs.

Dr. Luca Serafini (p), Prof. Emanuela Marrocu, Prof. Raffaele Paci

This paper investigates the determinants of interfirm agreements — joint ventures and strategic alliances — in the context of the twin transition, examining how spatial proximity and technological relatedness shape collaborative behaviour among firms. The twin transition, combining digitalisation and environmental sustainability, is increasingly driving firms to pool capabilities and share risks through interfirm collaborations. Yet the spatial and sectoral logic underpinning such partnerships remains poorly understood.
Drawing on a novel dataset from SDC Platinum covering announced agreements worldwide over 2000–2025, we identify green, digital, and twin transition agreements through keyword-based classification of deal names and synopses. Italy serves as the empirical laboratory, allowing direct comparability with an established benchmark while advancing the analysis in time coverage and thematic focus. A descriptive mapping of Italian firms' participation in transition-related agreements is complemented by an econometric analysis of partnership formation based on the rare-events logit framework.
A key novelty of the paper is the decomposition of proximity effects by agreement type, testing whether green and digital partnerships exhibit a distinctive spatial and sectoral logic compared to the full sample. The findings are expected to shed light on whether transition-related collaborations are geographically concentrated or widely distributed, and which sectors and regions are leading the formation of green and digital alliances — with direct implications for the design of industrial and cohesion policies.

Dr. Tania Fernández García (p), Dr. Juan Andrés Piedra-Peña

This study examines regional disparities in research and development (R&D) efficiency across European Union (EU) regions, building on the neoclassical premise that technological change is a key driver of long-term economic growth. Since the Lisbon Strategy, the EU has promoted R&D investment as a central pillar of competitiveness and cohesion, setting a target of 3% of gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD). Although average EU investment has increased from around 1.8% at the beginning of the century to approximately 2.3% in 2025, and several Central and Northern regions exceed the 3% target, regional income gaps persist and have even widened. In response, the EU introduced Regional Smart Specialization Strategies (RIS3), requiring regions to identify their strengths and focus resources on sectors with innovation potential. However, risks such as regional lock-ins, limited diversification, and weak innovation systems may hinder the effectiveness of these strategies. The paper argues that increasing R&D spending alone is insufficient; what matters is the efficiency with which resources are transformed into innovation outputs.
To measure this efficiency, the authors apply a parametric stochastic frontier model using panel data for NUTS-2 EU regions from 2008 to 2021, with patents as the proxy for innovation output. This approach allows the separation of inefficiency from random noise and enables the simultaneous estimation of efficiency scores and external determinants.
The paper makes three main contributions. First, it provides the first measurement of regional R&D efficiency in Europe. Second, it highlights efficiency as a crucial intermediate link between R&D investment and economic growth. Third, it offers policy-relevant insights, showing persistent center-periphery efficiency gaps and questioning the effectiveness of focusing solely on increasing GERD without improving the quality and allocation of regional innovation resources