Regional innovation policies in favor of doing-using interacting (DUI) innovations in lagging regions: What about the perceptions of local SMEs?

The ability and willingness to innovate are recognized as being among the most important conditions for improving the performance of economically lagging regions.Regional innovation policies can help such regions to catch up, which is why the EU Commission, the EU member states and many of their subnational regions have created corresponding regional innovation policies, in some cases with a considerable volume of funding. However, after decades of such policies, interregional economic disparities have not been significantly reduced in many countries. The economically and innovatively weaker regions usually lack the necessary funds to develop corresponding regional innovation promotion programs themselves. This paper is dedicated to an aspect of this problem that has not been addressed enough to date: the viewpoint of small- and medium-sized firms in the target regions of such regional innovation policies. We pay particular attention to both innovation modes: the Science-Technology-Innovation (STI) mode and the Doing-Using-Interacting (DUI) mode, applying a recent categorization of DUI indicators when checking for their innovation policy relevance. We also differentiate between lagging regions in a rural context and in an urban one. Based on extensive qualitative data from six structurally weak German regions and 59 enterprises, we draw empirically sound conclusions on the effectiveness of such policies, focusing on seven fields of policy action. In addition, we are developing proposals on how such policies can be modified in future so that they simultaneously satisfy the needs of the target group and increase the innovative performance of lagging regions.