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.