41^st Congress of the European Regional Science Association

Benchmarking Regional Innovation: A Comparison of
Bavaria, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

Stephen Roper

School of Management and Economics and Northern Ireland Economic Research
Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, BT7 1NN.

E-mail: s.roper@qub.ac.uk

Fax: 0044-2890-439435

Abstract:

Regional regeneration strategies based on developing innovation capability have
received much support in recent years. Evaluation of the effectiveness of such
initiatives has, however, been limited largely to an assessment of the impact of such
strategies on policy frameworks and attitudes. Based on innovation survey data
covering nearly a decade, this paper outlines a number of external innovation
benchmarks for core and peripheral regions within the EU. The benchmarks
considered cover the innovation objectives, constraints, resources, linkages and
outputs of manufacturing firms.

Despite considerable efforts in recent years to develop the innovation capability and
institutional support framework for innovation in Northern Ireland and the Republic
of Ireland, the benchmarks still point to a substantial performance gap between the
Irish and German study regions, and provide little evidence of convergence over the
1991-99 period. The benchmarks also suggest other more general points emphasising
a general shortening of product lifecycles¹ and a related shift towards more radical
innovation. More disappointing is in that in each of the study regions the development
of environmentally friendly products is given a low and diminishing priority by
manufacturing firms.

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