How can science shops contribute to regional development?
European policy for the European Research Area (COM, 2001/549 and COM, 2002/565) places a particular emphasis on regions as drivers of research and innovation capacity and economic and technological development: “regions are important because they form the spatial basis of groupings of research and innovation operators which have come to be known as “clusters”, often considered as the main drivers of regional development. Clusters are formed by groups of innovative enterprises, academic and research institutions, local development agencies and/or other supporting organisations. (…) In its most successful expression, clustering combines industry, government and nongovernmental organisations, together with a number of knowledge-specific players (universities, research centres, science and technology parks and technopoles, innovation agencies acting like service, competence and diffusion centres)”. (COM, 2001/549, page 8) Research on the impact of Science Shop projects in the SCIPAS pro
