This paper draws on observations from a long-established network in France, located around the town of Cognac – site of distilled beverages with the same name. Firms within this network have been successful in developing new types of products in the past decades, drawing on and diverging from...

Institutions (including regulations) are constitutive elements of innovation systems, and therefore cornerstones of innovation policy. Focusing on (soft and hard) regulation, the paper identifies the most salient regulatory areas from the perspective of the innovation system. When asking about...

The Varieties of Capitalism literature has drawn little attention to industrial renewal and diversification, while the related diversification literature has neglected the institutional dimension of industrial change. Bringing together both literatures, the paper proposes that institutions have...

Smart specialisation features prominently in the European regional policy context. This paper discusses how the configuration of the regional institutional framework affects smart specialisation dynamics and policy. It elaborates why and how institutional diversity and integration promote...

Previous research has shown that firms react differently to the same institutional configurations due to their different backgrounds. This study examines a regional economy in France in which 300 firms are operating under the same framework conditions and have done so over a long period. From...

This study analyzes the evolution of a ‘protected label of origin’ cluster in France with a particularly homogeneous and explicit institutional framework, which has given birth to significant incremental and radical changes in recent decades. By providing insights into these change processes...