Designing Regional Innovation Systems in Transitional Economies: A Creative Ecosystem Approach

Regional Innovation Systems (RIS) have become a policy panacea for states looking to develop their economies. However, much of the research on RIS is from Western developed economies, which have established infrastructures and institutional governance networks. Yet, in transitional economies, the growth rate in some parts of the economy is so rapid that policy makers and institutions are unable to record changes as they occur, including the emergence of new economic sectors, such as the creative industries. This results in knowledge gaps, leading to an inability to understand, identify or react to the needs of those nascent sectors. Our research paper, through the analysis of creative industries in Vietnam, proves that taking a creative ecosystems approach to designing RIS will bridge these knowledge gaps by providing a mechanism through which information can be collated and fed into the policy process. Our paper facilitates this process by developing a model to understand the characteristics of the creative ecosystem and as well as a flipped model of policy diffusion to allow bottom-up development of policy in transitional economies. We then discuss how these models can be used by policy makers to design a more informed RIS to meet the needs of the sector.