SME'S SUPPORT AND REGIONAL POLICY IN EU - THE NORTE-LITORAL PORTUGUESE EXPERIENCE

• Recognising that the temporal dimension (“... the pace of learning and
innovation/creation processes”) (Camagni, 1995:195) is of paramount importance
regarding the understanding of the evolution process of territorial systems. Taking
the time dimension in another sense, we could say that the territorial systems’
viability depends upon its capability for building up a common vision of the future,
based upon converging anticipations of the local actors (‘temporal proximity’)
which stimulates long-run profitable behaviours (Lecoq, 1995);

• Recognising that the territorial governance may play a most important role in
the collective process of learning. A changing competitive context calls out for the
adoption of continuous processes of innovation and a qualitative leap for co-
operation aiming at creating ‘collective goods’ that compensate the disadvantages
associated with the small dimension. This process seems to be facilitated through
the action of an institutional tissue capable of stimulating synergies thereby
exerting a pilot function (Amin and Thrift, 1993; Morgan, 1997). In the same sense,
Bramanti (1999:649) refers: “There is increasing evidence that modifications in the
learning processes, and in the governance structures sustaining them, are not the
result of a spontaneous dynamic of territories and milieux; there is a growing need
for 'systems integrators' ".

The paradigm of the complex and adaptive systems assimilates these points of convergence
and, at the same time, offers a wider theoretical framework to the ‘competence perspective’,
upon the firm (Teece and Pisano, 1994) and upon the region (Lawson, 1999). More than a
cumulative productive resource, knowledge becomes a strategic resource in the dynamic of
the relation between the system and its environment (Conti and Dematteis, 1995).

As an attempt to sum up this theoretical analysis, we deem of importance to remind that the
use of the concept of complex adaptive system is based upon the progressive emergence of a
new paradigm in the social sciences related area (Dupuy 1982; Radzicki, 1990; Le Moigne,
1995) that constitutes a common theoretical background for the understanding of human
systems, of living systems and the rest of the nature (Wicken, 1998). It is our understanding
that we are dealing with an analytical framework which seems to be more adequate to
studying the systems where there occur interactions (never fully explained), due to chance,
necessity, design and human creativity (Delorme, 1997).

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