The renewed Lisbon strategy puts special emphasis on the potential role that Information and Communication Technologies can play in meeting the challenges of boosting growth, competitiveness and cohesion throughout the EU. There is also a general understanding among policy makers that investment...

Factual evidence suggests that ICT-led growth and ICT-producing sectors are strongly localised geographically. Given that the nature of ongoing technological change and innovation dynamics has a strong local/regional component, public policies need to be designed at this level as well. However,...