Reconsidering structural conditions: Institutional infrastructure for innovation-based industrial path renewal

This paper aims to develop a more elaborated understanding of innovation-based renewal of industries from a structural perspective. Current perspectives offer rather simplistic views on the role of structural conditions in regional industrial renewal process. In order to overcome this limitation, we draw on the concept of ‘institutional infrastructure’ to examine the ensemble of structural elements for industrial path development in regional contexts. The institutional infrastructure and its conditions, i.e. its elaboration and coherence, are seen as important factors for industrial change. To illustrate this approach, we investigate renewal processes in two traditional automotive regions in Austria and Sweden.