Towards a new era for regional development: Investing in leadership

In this new long-lasting period of crisis, public investments in general, and particularly those in support of innovation and economic development at regional level, are depressed by stability policies. The shortage of resources for any type of expansive policy poses regional decision makers straight questions to be answered: which has the primacy among the objectives of cohesion and growth? How to achieve more with less resource? New smarter forms of policymaking to support innovation and economic development are then needed. This can be achieved by going beyond the simplistic idea that distributing small bits of money to SMEs is in any case good support to industries. On the contrary, the focus of support policy has to be narrowed on targets in the perspective of a `selective investment of public resources'. Policies in support of company creation may offer a good example of this.