Support of Innovation at Regional Level

The aim of this article is to evaluate the support of innovation on the regional level and the regional levels in V4 countries. We analyse regional innovation strategies in these countries. The regional development strategies are relatively new phenomenon in V4 countries. Most of the regions created their strategies less than five years ago and many of them have been still in implementation phase, so we concentrate more on the creation of innovation strategies rather than on their implementation. The paper has two main parts - theoretical background containing the examples and reasons for innovation support at the regional level as well as key problems for governance of innovation support, mainly the problem of complexity of innovation support, which goes behind officially established borders. The second part compares activities and measures of 29 regional innovation strategies in these regions and identifies some key differences among them. We found out more similarities among the regions from the same country rather than similarities among the regions with similar level of development (e.g. in metropolitan regions). We deal with some key issues for regional innovation strategies – appropriate level and the role of regional self-governments for creation of strategy, sectoral dimension of RIS or “building cathedral in the desert” problem. We also identify dominance of hard infrastructure measures in the strategies. We also compare specific innovation strategies with general regional development strategies in order to identify key differences in governing creation of these strategies. We suggested some improvement in the process of creation and implementation strategies. The concentration of priorities and resources is of crucial importance for success. Better evaluation process is needed to be able to more prioritise the suggested activities and to be more specific on particular regional needs.