The Danish regional innovation system in transition

This chapter analyses how different theoretically founded rationales have shaped Danish regional innovation policy since the turn of the millennium, with an emphasis on an innovation system perspective on two reforms implemented in 2007 and 2019, respectively. The reforms follow in the wake of a year-long debate on the relevance of the regional level for policies, which also includes a debate on which actors are relevant at different levels of aggregation. The policy reform of 2019 appears to centralise how business support is provided and also to possibly decouple some of the already established systemic links between actors. Although the new business promotion policy setup in Denmark does acknowledge that the decentralised business promotion effort should take its point of departure in local and regional growth challenges and framework conditions, there is a clear move towards simplification in organisation and actors, as well as in policy means. The precise, adequate configuration of the innovation system and its support infrastructure is difficult to determine ex ante and surely needs to be seen in a specific systemic context.