Abstract
Innovation is a driving concept in urban and regional development, often applied without attending to its implications for different peripheral contexts. In the scope of mission-oriented innovation and sustainability transitions, innovation as promoted by EU policy is beginning to move beyond the economic competitiveness and growth aims of prior periods, to include social and environmental innovations that have potential to transform peripheral economies and improve wellbeing and quality of life. Although the regional innovation systems literature has recently seen a turn toward actors and institutions, research on innovation policy has tended to focus on content rather than implementation, despite knowing the limitations faced by peripheries. This research therefore seeks to enlighten institutional supports for innovation in peripheries, orienting upon the case of South Tyrol, Italy, a mountainous region at the centre of Europe, largely characterized by rurality and limited accessibility. Despite exhibiting multiple aspects of peripherality, South Tyrol is an economically prosperous region with high quality of governing institutions, but it still performs below the EU average in terms of innovation. In the current stage of this research, social network analysis is used to understand stakeholder interactions in the regional innovation ecosystem, to enable deeper investigation of a promising sector for green transition – renewable energy and buildings. In doing so, it questions what types of innovation are pursued or supported by different actors and why, and challenges notions of innovativeness and peripherality that come to characterize such regions.