Comparing regional strategies and policy

options for addressing the lack of human capital

Marifé Zudaire Echávarri and Marian García Martínez ,NASUVINSA

Arnoud Lagendijk and Frans de Man, Nijmegen School of Management

Frans Coenen, University of TwenteRSA, Delft, 16-05-2012

Setting

• Material is taken from sub-project BUTTON – Pushing the right Button, Towards tailored policy measures to attract and retain highly educated workers, a part of the INTERREG IV C Mini-Programme ‘Brain Flow’, funded by the ERDF.

• Button aims at delivering bespoke regional policy options based on an understanding and analysis of attraction, retention and outmigration of highly educated people.

Five Regions

Ostwestfalen-Lippe (OWL)NRW, GermanyHedmark, NorwayNavarra, SpainTwente, NetherlandsGreater Basel, Switzerland

All in ‘non-core’ positions between peripheral and core metropolitan areas, located at a certain distance from the core.

The regional ‘talent’ issue

• talent is relatively immobile and remains sticky relative to finance or knowledge

• highly educated workers are often prepared to travel longer distances, facilitated by for instance high-speed rail and cheaper flights, but they are generally susceptible to ‘intervening opportunities’ innovative business and talent always tends to cluster together.

• the result is an economic geography of slow but ongoing concentration.

Three pervasive major spatial trends

• core regions prone to grow, particularly if they welcome new talent (cf. London), benefitting from ‘smart growth’

• peripheral areas bound to undergo population decline and hence socio-economic change, requiring bespoke strategies of ‘peripheral specialisation and ‘managed decline’

• intermediary regions too small for ‘smart growth’ and too big for ‘peripheral specialisation’, requiring focused ‘smart specialisation’ based on the attraction/retention of ‘talent’ and knowledge valorisation, amongst others

The meaning of ‘talent’

• not just mean the embodiment of ‘knowledge’ or ‘knowledge creation’.

• also reflexivity, i.e. sensitivity to local and global opportunities and challenges, and for local capacities and opportunities for capacity building and collective learning

• important social dimension: expression of interests, preferences, passion

• orchestrators of local socio-economic development• ‘talent’ presents a complex, context-specific

regional asset (or vector).

So, what is the role of ‘brains’, or ‘talent’ - under the conditions of

• increasing need for talent for wealth creation (knowledge intensity, sensitivity to local and global opportunities and challenges, reflexivity)

• ongoing trends towards urban agglomeration and concentration, in polycentric forms – deepening the divide between core, peripheral or intermediary spaces (‘non-core’)

• specific local challenges of economic restructuring, population decline and other pressing social problems

• mounting socio-economic problemsprompted by economic crisis?

Assessing policy response• insights into the drives, reasons and motives behind in

and out migration of highly educated workers, in view of regional development challenges

• awareness amongst politicians, employers and society of the multiple aspects of the problem and remedies

• understanding the role for place-marketing• engagement of private partners and non-governmental

organizations in policydesign

Policy aspects1. Strategic development: selection of key issues, domains,

clusters, forms of governance2. Image building and branding, as basis for retention & attraction3. Quality of life: housing, transport, provisions and amenities4. Labour market: brokerage, targeting particular social groups5. Education policies and measures (e.g. life-long learning)6. Business support: training and improvement of local living

conditions by large firms; talent attraction and use by SMEs7. Research and innovation; role of talent in research centres,

universities, consultancies, R&D departments, innovation projects and circles etc.

Regional assessmentsAspect Twente OWL Navarra

Strategy Attraction/ retention/ clustering

Nurturing talent/ ‘future oriented sectors’

Comprehensive plans; nurturing talent

Branding cluster-based Outreach strategy

Quality of Life Family orientation

Labour Market Human capital route

focusing on women and ethnic groups

Competencies & skills improvement

Education ‘Linx’ learning chain preventing dropouts

Internationalisation strategy

Business support TOP-programme SME focus clustering & exports

Innovation ‘Triple Helix’ Triple Helix +union R&D promotion

Regional assessmentsAspect Gr. Basel Hedmark

Strategy Accommodating talent, no attraction

Creative class, attraction talent

Branding cluster based Regional branding

Quality of Life housing, family focus, clean streets

nature and sports, HST

Labour Market

Education HE investment

Business support cluster based cluster based

Innovation Labs & innovation circles

‘Triple Helix’

Conclusion• Tendency in policy discourse to use ‘talent’ in an

instrumental way• Policy perspectives in the regions often manifest a richer,

more varied socio-economic use of ‘talent’ • But also the tendency to copycat• Search for the right balance between local pathways and

learning from other regions, between ‘bespoke’ and ‘boilerplate’ solutions

• Need for a more inclusive policy discourse (in development)