Green Invention as Leverage for Economic Growth in Locally Collaborative European Regions

Environmental innovation is receiving increasing attention from scholars and policymakers as a key driver in the development of a greener and more competitive economy. First, the similarity of environmental issues across regions makes green technologies and solutions highly scalable by stimulating regions to support a more effective environment-related invention process within and beyond the region. Second, the complex and multidisciplinary nature of environmental innovations encourages regions to promote collaboration networks in order to boost recombinant opportunities. From this perspective, the chapter explores the effects of green invention and green collaboration on regional competitiveness. The focal idea is that green inventions can increase the efficiency and competitiveness of local firms, while green collaboration can make both the production and application processes faster, with positive effects in terms of regional development and growth. The study is based on a longitudinal analysis of 232 European regions over the period from 2000 to 2013. Data are organised by merging OECD RegPat, Cambridge Econometrics and Eurostat databases. Our main results confirm the positive influence of green invention intensity, as well as intraregional green collaboration, on growth in regional competitiveness, with significant implications for policymakers.