On the persistence and complementarities of design and technological change: a regional perspective

This paper explores the dynamics between design and technological change for regional innovation. We discuss a framework integrating persistence effects and processes of knowledge recombination that explicitly recognize the role of design as a separated yet synergic element to technological change within the context of regional innovation systems. Using a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) approach and information on over 900 NUTS-3 regions across 20 countries in Europe for the period 2000–12, we provide novel evidence of evolutionary dynamics for both design and technological change along with simultaneous complementarities expanding the set of combinatorial opportunities for regional innovation.