Towards a problem-oriented regional industrial policy: possibilities for public intervention in framing, valuation and market creation

Abstract

Recent thinking about regional industrial and innovation policies remains focused on the supply of new knowledge, and on grand challenges and missions, but continues to take problems and demand for granted. In this paper we build on political science, sociology of markets and valuation approaches to explore the roles of agency, institutions, networks and values in discursive processes of problem framing and market creation. We identify a number of trade-offs and scale/spatial issues in the processes, practices and constitutive elements of demand formation and market creation that in turn suggest new possibilities for innovation and industrial policy interventions.