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Tese de doutoramento em Sociologia, Universidade da Beira Interior, 2002

The purpose of this article is to contribute for the debate about the construction of governance spaces which guarantee the continuity of the regional development public policies, thus articulating actors and optimizing strategic projects in order to improve regional competitiveness and sustainability. The call by European Union policymakers for wider and more direct involvement in improving European governance is coupled with the increased usage of new information and communications technologies by public administrations across the EU. Portugal is involved in a catching-up process with high investments in the areas of innovation and ICT infrastructures, nonetheless governance remains a field of action that deserves further attention and discussion. Based on the analysis of the Portuguese Digital Cities and Regions Program, we argue that the interest in the “digital” has been constructed around a rather narrow set of empirical and theoretical issues concerning mainly to technological innovation, neglecting other strategic political areas, such as the politics of governance and state re-territorialization around the city-region, the technological and social innovation, the role of democracy and citizenship in city-regions politics, and tensions around social reproduction and sustainability across the city-regions. These questions will be analysed and discussed in the light of the Portuguese experience and some final considerations will be outlined concerning the weaknesses and strengths of digital cities and regions governance. The analytical work was based on observations in different Portuguese digital cities and regions with the ultimate goal of increasing regional competitiveness and cohesiveness.

Regions are widely recognised as playing a fundamental role in the promotion of the knowledge economy, but most research has been focusing on diagnosing territorial archetypes, their dynamics peculiarities, as well as their drivers of innovation and innovative performance. Less attention has been paid on establishing a linkage between these theoretical foundations and the design of a policy framework and guidelines to promote regional innovation ina systemic way. Based on a vast theoretical research and on the analysis of empirical evidence, the main objective of this article is precisely to discuss this issue in the light of the mainstream theoretical frameworks that enable a better understanding of the relationship innovation-territory, analysing, also, the main criticisms those approaches are arising among some scholars. This article will present a discussion of the main approaches that constitute the theoretical corpus of the so-called territorial innovation models, pointing out to some of their main ambiguities, misconceptions and conceptual gaps and, lastly, will integrate this reflexion into an alternative framework proposal for a new generation of regional innovation policy.

Innovation has moved to the foreground in regional policy in the three last decades. Public policies have been shaped by «best practice models» derived from high-tech urban-metropolitan areas and successful regions. However, lessons learned from these examples are rarely transferable elsewhere. The regional innovation systems in peripheral regions, and the likelihood of their acting as instruments for territorial competitiveness, have rarely been the subjects of discussion. The main objective of the article is precisely to take Portugal as an example to enrich this analysis. The first part of this article examines the concept of regional innovation systems against the background of modern theories of innovation and regional policies. It is argued that the role of localized learning is of strategic importance in the promotion of endogenous regional development. The authors then discuss the structural barriers and opportunities to promote regional innovation strategies in the Portuguese political, economic and social context, and, finally, they point out some specificities that need to be addressed in the redesign of public interventions in order to improve regional competitiveness and sustainability.

Innovation has been assuming a growing role in regional policy over the past three decades. Public policies have been shaped by "best practice models" associated with new technologies and successful urban-metropolitan areas. However, the knowledge obtained from these examples are rarely transferable to other territorial contexts. The reflection on the role of regional policy based on the promotion of the innovation potential in peripheral regions with structural development problems has been clearly relegated to a secondary plan. The main objective of this article is precisely, first, to analyze the main impacts globalization and knowledge economy are having on the territories, then discuss this issue in the light of the main theoretical frameworks that enable a better understanding of the relationship innovation-territory, analyzing, finally, the main implications in the design and implementation of territorial innovation policies directed towards the promotion of competitiveness of peripheral least favored regions. Peripheral regions with structural development problems need basically to avoid tecnopolitan drifts and other misconceptions associated with the fads of the ready-made recipes, rethinking their competitive positioning and finding new formulas that allow improving their insertion patterns into the modern knowledge economy global flows. We must no longer consider territorial innovation policy as a mere process of resource allocation and spatial design; it should be understood as a set of policies that favor the creation of resources and new wealth. Today there is a wide consensus about the fact that the competitive success of the territories rests less on the traditional economic and geographical determinisms than on the socio-political capacity of initiative and organization - is not an easy challenge, but, as paradoxical as it may seem, it is an excellent auspice for peripheral regions.

Diversos estudos têm vindo a dar relevo à matriz institucional de apoio à inovação empresarial e ao desenvolvimento local e regional, previlegiando a inventariação/caracterização das infra-estruturas institucionais existentes e a apresentação de propostas que visam preencher as lacunas existentes nessa matéria. Neste artigo, embora se reflicta sobre os limiares necessários de infra-estruturas institucionais, privilegia-se a reflexão sobre a capacidade institucional instalada na Sub-região estudada. Partindo de uma reflexão socioeconómica de enquadramento, passa-se, em seguida à identificação de factores que importa potenciar para reforçar a capacidade de intervenção do tecido institucional da Sub-região, no seu todo, para depois se fazer uma análise mais virada para o tecido institucional de apoio à actividade produtiva. A necessidade de aprofundar e alargar a reflexão sobre a capacidade institucional a instalar/instalada nas diversas regiões e de identificar as políticas e as medidas mais adequadas a essa qualificação são algumas das notas conclusivas apresentadas.

A relação entre as dinâmicas do território e os fenómenos de reestruturação sectorial é, por certo, um dos ramos do conhecimento e da intervenção pública em que uma sistemática análise reflexiva se torna mais premente. Nos territórios de baixa densidade redobra de importância a investigação sobre esta dialéctica entre território e função. A análise da fileira da madeira no Pinhal Interior Sul (Oleiros, Proença-a-Nova, Sertã, Vila de Rei e Mação) pareceu corporizar um objecto de estudo com características únicas até porque, por um lado, é uma problemática relativamente pouco estudada e, por outro, constitui, sem sombra de dúvida, um eixo estratégico da economia desta sub-região que interessa potenciar sob o ponto de vista da criação de riqueza e de emprego. O presente Estudo tem como objectivo geral conhecer aprofundadamente a realidade empresarial das indústrias transformadoras da madeira no Pinhal Interior Sul, no sentido de fundamentar intervenções de sentido estratégico que visem estruturar esse conjunto de actividades, dotando-as de acrescidos factores de competitividade. A clara maioria das empresas inquiridas durante o trabalho de campo que foi realizado funda ainda as suas vantagens competitivas em estratégias de volume e na optimização da relação qualidade/custo, o que, num cenário tendencial de concorrência acrescida à escala internacional, será cada vez mais insuficiente como garantia de sucesso empresarial. As empresas, no essencial, assentam as suas estratégias numa concepção produtivista, que assimila modernização e inovação, relegando para o papel meramente acessório outras dimensões incontornáveis do fenómeno inovatório, como sejam as modalidades associadas à gestão, à formação dos recursos humanos e à inserção nos circuitos comerciais. A aposta deve passar pela criatividade e inovação, acompanhada por uma forte agressividade comercial, passo esse que reputamos como decisivo na afirmação competitiva das empresas da fileira da madeira. A fileira da madeira, no Pinhal Interior Sul, parece padecer de um claro défice de activação e articulação entre os diversos actores institucionais e de uma escassa aproximação destes ao universo empresarial. A esta situação não será alheia, por um lado, a falta de uma forte voz de liderança institucional e organizacional e, por outro, e paralelamente, o vazio de prospectiva estratégica que possa ajudar no enquadramento do comportamento dos empresários e entidades do sector público e associativo.