It is beginning to become evident that for regions to be able to construct advantage for themselves, as distinct from institutional borrowing of possibly inappropriate policies from elsewhere, they have to be much more outward-looking from their innovation system than hitherto. This is true not simply for regional innovation systems but, in high technology sectors at a European scale too. In the nineties, most functional systems had evolved a trajectory taking them towards the ‘networking’ model, building ‘constructed advantage’ by improving connectivity. This means recognition of institutional and governance capabilities in regions, recognising variation in the quality of regional communication infrastructures, understanding the knowledge base strengths of the region, and presuming that true regional innovation system connectivity is not complete in most regions. Moreover connectivity to distant networks has become more of a priority than it was a decade or so ago when the idea of regional innovation systems was in its infancy. This, in turn, has clear policy implications:

• it is methodologies rather than recipes that policy makers nowadays require.
• Also the notion of policy ‘platforms’ that include an array of instruments appropriate to constructing regional advantage by enabling firms to be highly knowledgeable and with global connectivity but also integrated with different policy levels is unavoidable.
• Such policies must interact with issues such as compensating for market failures, enhancing the quality of regional talent pools for global sourcing and outsourcing, and policies for enhancing regional knowledge flows also included.
• Policy auditing such that ‘conventional wisdoms’ (like the attractiveness of academic spinouts as a regional innovation model) are challenged in light of performance impact is essential, and sometimes prosaic pathways such as growing existing firms rather that growing business birth rates re-prioritised.
• In the toolkit are necessities like mission policies supporting targeted finance for research into cutting-edge technologies as well as the more pervasive, diffusion policies associated with platform and framework support.
• Equally, a balance between firm and ‘milieu’ strengthening has to be struck. These take a variety of forms and vary in relevance and impact according to regional characteristics.
• Talent is in short supply nearly everywhere, so policies to assist its formation, recruitment and retention are obviously valuable policy contributions.

Above all the analysis and evidence mobilised for this workshop point to a future in which innovation, talent-formation and entrepreneurship have to be considered in triplicate to construct regional advantage in ways that intersect profitably with regional, national and global innovation systems.