Looking at regional innovation systems and industrial knowledge bases from the South: An analysis of Argentine provinces

Abstract

Studies on regional innovation systems and, particularly, on differentiated knowledge bases are still highly concentrated in Europe. This article presents some original methodologies for adapting these approaches to peripheral countries and regions. Principal component analysis is used to construct two indexes that distinguish the degree of socio-economic development of Argentine provinces and their innovation systems development. The latest innovation survey and cluster analysis techniques are used to identify the predominant knowledge base among industries and then the regional productive specialisation. The results show a relationship between all these dimensions, especially in two large groups of provinces: one of peripheral innovation systems, specialized in symbolic sectors, with low socio-economic development; and the other of core-intermediate systems, with an analytical-synthetic combination and medium-high development. In Argentina, as in many developing countries, narrow and spatially blind innovation policies, dissociated from regional capabilities and production structures, usually reproduce regional inequalities and reinforce peripheral conditions.