Regional innovation systems are important because: 1) strong dynamics of innovation generation in regions are crucial for achieving national innovation policy objectives; and 2) innovation performance can contribute to improving the overall economic competitiveness of individual regions by increasing the productivity of firms. As such, the goals of regional innovation policy are relevant to policy makers from both the regional development and science and technology fields. This policy relevance appears to be increasing, not only in federal or regionalised countries such as Germany and Italy, where innovation policy has a strong regional focus, but also in countries with a more centralised policymaking tradition such as France and Japan.