The data presented here represents the work of the UK team led by Cardiff University. They were responsible for developing the overall theoretical framework and understanding of the concept of resilience, as well as undertaking qualitative research into knowledge recombinations and responses to economic shocks in two UK case study regions. The project partners in the Netherlands, France and Germany focused more on the quantitative elements of the project, the assessment of the structural properties of networks, and the concept of related variety. As such, the UK material includes innovation biographies for two UK case study regions, plus a case study of regional resilience in Wales. `This projects aims to develop theoretical and empirical research on the critical determinants of regional resilience. New business and consumer paradigms have recently emerged around eco-innovation, biotechnology, and photonics. At the same time, contemporary economic systems are characterized by high levels of internationalisation, chronic macro-economic instability and increasingly significant environmental challenges. A key question is whether regions that succeed in developing such emerging technological fields are more resilient to these trends. The project examines this question by building an evolutionary framework of regional resilience that facilitates understanding of how markets, technologies and territories co-evolve in a highly open and unstable economic environment. A central research question is whether growth through ‘related variety’ is preferable for reasons of diversity and inter-sectoral innovation opportunities, than that based upon ‘specialisation’ in specific high-demand technologies. The structural properties of networks will also be studied in order to investigate how and where they might favour related variety, along with how some organizations and governance structures help develop appropriate knowledge connections. This framework will be tested through quantitative assessments of technological relatedness at the European level in emerging technological fields, and qualitative assessment based on detailed biographies of the knowledge dynamics at work in selected territories.
Qualitative data has been collected using semi-structured interviews with a range of businesses and other key stakeholders including policy-makers in selected regions. We have also made use of an innovation biography methodology, which focuses on identifying the innovation and tracing its evolution through the various actors and networks involved in its development.
