Project description:
Regional knowledge in terms of specialist skills and knowledge gained through experience and culture is used to implement innovations. This is essential to remain competitive and economically resilient in a globalised business environment. Knowledge exchange between regional authorities is becoming increasingly important, especially given the devolution of power to local authorities across Europe and the need to increase the importance of the learning process. Regions are aware of the need to cooperate with other regions in learning to achieve development goals.
Previous research has focused on bilateral links between organizations from different regions rather than on learning within regional groups or associations. This is surprising, especially when we consider that these networks, in addition to collecting membership fees, often receive public financial support to boost regional economies and represent the interests of the regions and their inhabitants. Examining the learning and knowledge exchange processes between these networks in comparison with the regions in each network will help us understand their role in generating new knowledge and using it for innovation. It will also lead to recommendations for improving these processes and the functioning of institutions. More specifically, the structures, organization, and activities of such networks will be examined.
Through this comparison, different types of knowledge networks will be identified, their organisation, structure and how they function in terms of sharing knowledge exchange. The project will also investigate to what extent these networks behave as systems. When networks behave as systems, they are characterised by identifiable components, feedback, common development goals and clear geographical boundaries, which are important for managing and facilitating knowledge exchange and designing new policies to improve knowledge exchange. In order to increase the relevance of the study to many regions facing the same challenges around the world, networks of regions in two countries were selected: Poland and the UK. This will allow for the study of regions in different geopolitical contexts; the networks in the UK will represent networks with regions where the transfer of power from central to regional governments is at an advanced stage and the importance of regions in cooperation with other actors is likely to increase even more after Brexit.
In contrast, the Polish networks represent regions in an EU country where decentralization is still in its early stages. Finally, the study will benefit end users and policy makers by suggesting some policy implications for the management and functioning of networks and knowledge systems in general, as well as improving knowledge exchange and innovation in regions in particular.