This report was prepared by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE), led by Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Director, and is part of the programme of work of the Regional Development Policy Committee.
The report is a synthesis of the findings from work with eight regions and two countries in industrial transition that developed High Impact Actions – initiatives applying experimental governance arrangements or programming – to advance along their growth trajectories. It originates in work undertaken in 2018-2019 under a European Commission sponsored project “Pilot Action on Regions in Industrial Transition: The Peer-learning Exercise”, that culminated in the OECD report Regions in Industrial Transition: Policies for People and Places. The financial contributions and support from the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) are gratefully acknowledged.
The OECD Secretariat would particularly like to thank the local teams and their leaders in each participating region and country for their commitment to this project since its inception and for their willingness to share their experiences and High Impact Actions: Cantabria (SP), Centre-Val de Loire (FR), East and North Finland (FI), Grand-Est (FR), Greater Manchester (UK), Hauts-de-France (FR), North Middle Sweden (SE), Wallonia (BE), and Lithuania and Slovenia.
The project was co-ordinated by Sandra Jolk, under the supervision of Maria Varinia Michalun, Head of the Governance and Strategic Planning Unit in the Regional Development and Multi-level Governance Division in CFE, led by Dorothée Allain-Dupré. The report was developed by Maria Varinia Michalun, Luca Tacconi and Geoff Upton, with contributions from Sandra Jolk. The High Impact Action case studies were drafted by Hyunjoon Cho, Sandra Jolk, Nikos Patias, Matteo Schleicher, Luca Tacconi, and Geoff Upton. The report benefited from additional comments of Rüdiger Ahrend, Andrés Fuentes Hutfilter, Paolo Veneri, Stephan Visser and YingYin Wu. Our thanks also goes to Eric Reese for his support in the design and facilitation of the peer-to-peer workshop and international forum that contributed to the findings of this project and to Pedro Marques of INGENIO (joint research centre of the Spanish National Research Council and the Universitat Politècnica de València) for his insights into experimental governance.
The OECD wishes to extend its thanks to DG REGIO Unit G – Smart & Sustainable Growth and Programmes Implementation – and in particular, Ramunas Linartas and Catherine Wendt. Special thanks are extended to Peter Berkowitz of DG REGIO Unit B for launching Phase 1 of the Regions in Industrial Transition initiative, as well as his continuous support for the pilot regions.
Many thanks also to Pilar Philip for her support in preparing this publication, to Roxana Glavanov and Yingyin Wu for their work on the cover, to Andrew Brenner and Miriam Périer for editing the case studies, to Yingyin Wu for the case study formatting, and to Eleonore Morena, who edited and formatted the final manuscript.