Multiple-case study research

In order to investigate to what extent, and how, regional government matters for the design of ‘context-specific’ regional innovation policy, this study employs a case study research method. Yin (2003) defines a case study research method as “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident.” This research method was chosen over other qualitative research methods because the purpose of this study is to get a better understanding of how regional government can help foster regional innovation. Given that the regional context of innovation matters a great deal for what constitutes effective government intervention, a case study research method was considered most appropriate.

In order to compare different contexts – that is regions with different economic characteristics each generating its own set of innovation problems specific to the region’s innovation system – this case study research consists of multiple cases. Six European regions representing three regional innovation system types have been selected in view of conducting a cross-regional comparison. The research method of this study can, therefore, be labelled a multiple-case or comparative case study (Yin, 2003; Stake, 2006).

The study also wants to explore whether regional governments in federal government systems are better at fostering regional innovation than regional governments in centralised unitary government systems that have far less authoritative decision-making power. ‘Better’ here is to be understood as ‘better at designing a contextualised policy’ as opposed to a one- size-fits-all approach or a copy-and-paste imitation of policy measures seen elsewhere. That is why the six selected regions represent regions in Germany and the United Kingdom, two countries often portrayed as being at either end of the regional autonomy continuum. 4.3 Reasons for choosing a descriptive case study type

Yin (2003) distinguishes between different types of case studies; each of these types can be based on single or multiple cases. Case studies can be exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory, depending on the purpose they serve. The case study design of this study is a descriptive case study type. The reasons for this choice are as follows.

A descriptive case study type “presents a complete description of a phenomenon within its context” (Yin, 2003), and this description has a theoretical underpinning that guides the investigator on what (of the phenomenon) it is that needs to be described (Berg, 2004). The theoretical underpinning does not serve to determine cause-effect relationships, but to establish the criteria that define the scope and depth of the case being described (Yin, 2003). In order to define what makes up a ‘context-specific’ regional innovation policy, this study looks into Regional Innovation Systems theory. The ‘prototypology’ developed by Isaksen

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(2001), Nauwelaers & Wintjes (2003), and Tödtling & Trippl (2005) is used to define the regional innovation problématique in three ideal region types and to match these with idealised innovation policy answers. This theoretical framework serves to guide the expectations of what theory predicts one is likely to find as ‘context-specific’ regional innovation policy in the six regional cases. ‘Pattern-matching’ is a common data analysis technique within descriptive case studies and serves to compare “an empirically based pattern with a predicted one” (Trochim, 1989). This technique was also employed in this study.

Although this study is not about testing or developing hypotheses and can, therefore, neither be labelled ‘explanatory’ nor ‘exploratory’, its descriptive orientation does serve an exploratory purpose. As stated above, the descriptive purpose is to find out – from a guiding theoretical framework offered by the Regional Innovation Systems school of thought – to what extent regional innovation policy in the study’s six RITTS regions matches the theoretically predicted contextualisation. Based on the finding that there is a mismatch, the second part of the study moves from asking ‘what’ is ‘context-specific’ regional innovation policy to investigating the ‘how’. It sets out to explore how the design of this policy in the study’s six RITTS regions came about. Opening up the black box of policy-making is considered to shed more light on the type of ‘policy discussion’ that took place and the type of role regional government played in shaping that discussion.

Of the four functions distinguished in the literature, regional government in Germany is most often associated with the function of being a distinct ‘political-administrative entity’ within a larger government system (‘Politikverflechtung’, Scharpf, 1999). Regional government in the United Kingdom, on the other hand, is most strongly associated with the function of being a manager of resources ‘to deliver public goods and services’. It is beyond the scope of this study to investigate whether the formal administrative position of regional government within the nation-state favours certain functions over others and what the impact is on contextualised policy-making. However, the study is a first exploration in this direction. 4.4 The unit of analysis

The need for ‘translating’ a theoretical concern or abstract research question into something that is empirically observable for which data can be collected is perceived as being problematic in the case study research method. As Yin (2003) points out “because phenomenon and context are not always distinguishable in real-life situations (…) there will be many more variables of interest than data points.” How then to narrow down the phenomenon under investigation and develop a “sufficiently operational set of measures” (Yin, 2003)?

In this study, the unit of analysis is regional government, but in order to operationalise this actor the focus shifts to how this actor behaves and decides upon regional innovation policy in the policy-making process. The study looks at six regions that participated in a European programme called RITTS in the second half of the 1990s. RITTS aimed at reinforcing a region’s policy capacity in the area of innovation and technology transfer. Together with its sister programme RTP/RIS, they are the predecessors of the smart specialisation strategy underpinning current European regional policy. Observing ‘who’ decides ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘how’ and if possible ‘why’ during the three stages of the policy cycle in a RITTS project is assumed to generate a picture of what role regional government actually plays as opposed to deducing these roles from formal competencies, official missions, and task descriptions. Investigating how ‘context-specific’ regional innovation policy comes about (or not) is the approach taken in this study to reveal how regional government in the six European regions of this study

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matters for regional innovation. Please note that this study covers what happened during the lifetime of a RITTS project. What happened to the proposed regional innovation policy after the RITTS project had finished is outside the remit of this study.