Regional Innovation Systems in the periphery: a critical perspective

Abstract

The article focuses on a critical analysis of the Regional Innovation Systems' (RIS) approach. To do so, it delves into RIS’s theoretical framework to identify absent dimensions of analysis in order to improve its explanatory scope, specially, when RIS is applied in countries and regions of Latin America. Following this order, firstly, the article analyzes theoretical frameworks of the National Innovation System and the New Regionalism, as theoretical background of RIS’s approach due to they contribute to its emergence, pointing its continuities and the rise of an "orthodox consensus" linked to the RIS. Then, three missing dimensions are identified in the "orthodox consensus" and they are posed as necessary to incorporate and inter-relationally consider in the “orthodox consensus’ approach” in order to that approach wins explanatory scope. The dimensions are related to how capitalism works in its current phase ("scales and networks"), with asymmetric distribution of power, and the State’s potential role to router this arena of policies in certain countries and regions.