Enhancing the inventive capacity of European regions through interregional collaboration

Interregional technological collaboration stands as a pivotal policy tool within the European strategy aimed at fortifying smart and sustainable regional growth. Implicit within this policy framework lies the supposition that interregional collaboration actively facilitates the absorption and recombination of diverse and complementary knowledge domains. Nevertheless, the existing body of empirical evidence substantiating this assertion remains relatively weak. Our purpose is to bridge this gap by investigating the extent to which interregional collaboration can bolster the autonomous inventive capacity of regions. To achieve this goal, we focus on several dimensions of interregional collaboration, including intensity, diversification, depth, internal–external imbalance and quality.