Entrepreneurship and innovation policies in the European periphery. A research agenda

Innovation is a complex phenomenon, embracing both new processes (technological and organizational) and new products (goods and services). Similarly, the processes through which innovation emerge are extremely complex. These processes concern the emergence, diffusion and combination of knowledge elements, but also the transformation of these into new products and production processes. This transformation from basic research to applied research and to development and implementation of new processes and new products does not follow a linear path. Instead, it’s characterized by complicated feedback mechanisms and interactive relations involving science, technology, learning, production, institutions, organizations and above all policies. Innovation policies, defined as those elements of public and institutional actions that directly or indirectly affect the creation and diffusion of new products and processes, aim at learning of how to do new things in new ways. During the last decade, the European Regions invested in a wide variety of policies and initiatives in order to enhance their innovative and competitive scope. This document refers to those important elements of the innovative actions and is the outcome of an important scientific Conference that took place in the framework of the initiatives for the development of a comprehensive Regional Innovation Strategy in the region of Thessaly. The conference drew from the accumulated experience and contributed to the articulation of a research agenda for the emerging socio-economic and policy milieu.