Trinity of change agency, regional development paths and opportunity spaces

Submitted Paper Trinity of change agency, regional development paths and opportunity spaces Markus Grillitsch Lund University, Sweden Markku Sotarauta Tampere University, Finland Abstract The study of regional growth paths is a key theme in economic geography and of elemental interest for regional development. This paper addresses the interplay between path-dependent, structural forces and the construction and utilization of opportunities through agentic processes. Extending the evolutionary framework, it is argued that not only history but also perceived futures influence agentic processes in the present and thus shape regional development paths. The paper discusses the relevance and interdependencies of three types of agency with distinct theoretical roots, namely Schumpeterian innovative entrepreneurship, institutional entrepreneurship and place-based leadership, as main drivers of regional structural change. Keywords agency, evolutionary theory, opportunity space, path-dependency, regional development, regional growth, regional structural change I Introduction Increasing disparities between the main urban centers and more peripheral regions create challenges for our societies (OECD, 2016; EC, 2017; Iammarino et al., 2017). Fewer, less varied and less qualified jobs are offered in the periphery. This triggers reallocation of (particularly skilled) labor towards main urban centers and ongoing depopulation of more peripheral regions. The main cause for the growing disparities is that economic development increasingly depends on knowledge-intensive activities, which strive in metropolitan areas due to agglomeration economies, skill matching and knowledge spillovers. In contrast, more peripheral regions as well as regions that are specialized in traditional industries often struggle to find their place in the modern economy. Consequently, regions, defined as functional territorial contexts (Boschma, 2004), 1 offer varying preconditions to compete, innovate, and stimulate economic growth. Yet, after taking account of preconditions such as industrial Corresponding author: Markus Grillitsch, Department of Human Geography & CIRLCE - Center for Innovation Research and Competence in a Learning Economy, Lund University 22100, Sweden. Email: [email protected] Progress in Human Geography 1–20 ªThe Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0309132519853870 journals.sagepub.com/home/phg structure, the size of the region, capital and labor endowments and infrastructure, a large proportion of regional growth remains unexplained (Rodrı´guez-Pose, 2013). In other words, some regions grow significantly more than could be expected, given their preconditions, while the opposite is true for other regions. Taking this as a point of departure, the paper contributes theoretically and conceptually to addressing the following fundamental research question: Why do some regions grow more (or less) than others with similar structural preconditions? This question goes beyond the recent debate on economic diversification and regional industrial path development as it emphasizes both the construction and realization of development opportunities. In economic geography, two main theoretical traditions have been mobilized, namely evolutionary and institutional theory, to tackle new path development. Evolutionary theories ‘must be dynamical; they must deal with irreversible processes; and they must cover the generation and impact of novelty as the ultimate source of self-transformation’ (Boschma and Martin, 2007, emphasis original: 537). Evolutionary theories foreground ‘path dependent processes, in which previous events affect the probability of future events to occur’ (Boschma and Frenken, 2006: 280ff). The continuities of the past include individuals’ skills and knowledge, organizational routines, network interdependencies between individuals and organizations, and institutions (Grillitsch and Rekers, 2016). These propertiesare rigid, meaning it takes time and effort to change them. From an evolutionary account, novelty is introduced through innovation, which, however, is most likely in related fields (Frenken et al., 2007), thus creating a path-dependency in the process of self-transformation. Recently, proponents of evolutionary economic theory have also acknowledged that self-transformation may be the result of unrelated diversification (Boschma et al., 2017). Unrelated diversification is less likely but may have a greater transformative power. Evolutionary theory suggests that historically grown structural preconditions produce probabilities for certain future paths. Such a probabilistic account is, however, illequipped to explain the actions of individual agents or groups of them in particular places aimed at constructing or realizing development opportunities. Notwithstanding some exceptions (Dawley, 2014; Bristow and Healy, 2014), the evolutionary tradition in economic geography is largely ignorant about microlevel explanations for why new growth paths emergence in some regions but not in others despite similar preconditions (Boschma, 2017). A similar shortcoming can be identified in studies that are strongly anchored in institutional theory. Studies on varieties of capitalism and national innovation systems explain differences in economic trajectories, competitiveness and innovativeness with variations in national institutions (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Lundvall, 1992; Nelson, 1993; Freeman, 1995). At the regional level, the institutional tradition has probably received most traction in the work on regional innovation systems. Accordingly, region-specific formal and informal institutions as well as the embedding of the region in a multi-scalar institutional architecture set strong preconditions for innovation and thus regional development opportunities (Cooke and Morgan, 1994; Asheim and Isaksen, 1997; Doloreux and Parto, 2005; To¨dtling and Trippl, 2005; Gertler, 2010; Hassink, 2010). Still, these studies provide limited insights into the micro-level processes that shape new path development (Asheim et al., 2016; Uyarra et al., 2017). There is a dearth of knowledge about what actors do to create and exploit opportunities in given contexts, why they do so in some places and not in others, and why the effects of such efforts differ between apparently similar places. Consequently, against the backdrop of the more fundamental theoretical debate on structure and agency, the blind spot is the role of agency and its relation to structure. The 2Progress in Human Geography XX(X) theoretical debate on structure and agency has struggled with the dual nature of structure and agency for a long time. Giddens (2007 [1984]) proposes a dualism where one becomes meaningless without the other. Giddens argues that agency is always contextual and thereby anchored in time and space. Due to this anchoring of agency in time and space, his work has also reached human geographers (Dyck and Kearns, 2006). Even though Giddens argues for a continual interplay of agency and structure in theory, his methodological approach of bracketing either agency or structure in empirical work has been criticized (Jessop, 2001). This implies, for instance, that an empirical focus on agency may assume structural conditions as given. In contrast, Jessop (2001) suggests a relational approach with the aim ‘to examine structure in relation to action and action in relation to structure, rather than bracketing one of them’ (p. 1223). Such a relational approach gives credit to the emergent nature of structure and puts emphasis on agents’ varying capabilities, resources and powers (Gregson, 2005; Coe and Jordhus-Lier, 2011), and potentially links back to explanations of uneven development across space by explicitly focusing on structures of power (Faulconbridge, 2012: 735). Giddens (1984) contrasts functionalism and structuralism with hermeneutics and interpretative sociology. While the former gives primacy to structure, the latter zooms in on the subjective experience – i.e. on agency. He notably relates functionalism and structuralism to system and evolutionary theories, which – according to his analysis – suffer from a poor understanding of agency. As mentioned before, in the current debate on regional path development, evolutionary and institutional theory are prominent, while there is no agency-focused debate with the same weight as in hermeneutics and interpretative sociology. However, there are accounts of different types of agency in geography, based on different theoretical traditions, which have not been consolidated so far. Giddens’ work has been criticized (Jessop, 2001; Coe and Jordhus-Lier, 2011), but the need to theorize and conceptualize the relation between structure and agency remains. Our approach differs from that of Giddens as it is more concrete, focusing on the emergence of regional growth paths. To some extent, our approach also differs from studies seeking to analyze ‘modalities of power’, i.e. the many forms of social power constructed and exercised to empower certain social groups to exploit economic opportunities while disempowering others (Allen, 2003). We acknowledge the importance of structures of power and related spatial disparities (Sunley, 2008) but investigate conceptually how actors influence path development. Our approach is explicitly dealing with ‘the ways actors marshal and exercise resources as part of attempts to shape the behaviour of others and in the process gain economic advantage’ (Faulconbridge, 2012: 735). The main objective of the paper is to propose a holistic conceptual framework for the analysis of agency in emerging regional growth paths. Regional paths emerge due to the intertwining of a whole range of actions, and intended and unintended results of them (Dawley, 2014; Karnøe and Garud, 2012; Simmie, 2012; Garud and Karnøe, 2003), yet such a holistic framework is missing. It is argued that three types of agency, originating in different fields of literature, are essential for regional path development. These are Schumpeterian innovative entrepreneurship rooted in the entrepreneurship literature, institutional entrepreneurship resting on institutional theory, and place-based leadership developed in the city and regional development literature but being inspired by the broader leadership literature. The discussion unfolds how the three types of agency – separately and in combination – contribute to the emergence of regional growth paths. Arguments are advanced why and how the three types of agency condition, call for, and necessitate each other, thereby Grillitsch and Sotarauta 3 constituting a trinity of change agency that is essential for shaping regional growth paths. Section II.1 articulates how the rather abstract notion of agency is mobilized to explain the emergence of regional growth paths. Then, the relevance and contribution of Schumpeterian innovative entrepreneurship, institutional entrepreneurship, and place-based leadership are explored in sections II.2, II.3 and II.4. In Section III, we return to structure by relating agency to the time-dynamic structural preconditions agents face in specific places. Section IV discusses how to approach agency in empirical studies and Section V concludes the paper. II Trinity of change agency: Three types of agency driving regional path development 1 The concept of trinity of change agency In the Dictionary of Human Geography, human agency is defined as ‘the ability of people to act, usually regarded as emerging from consciously held intentions, and as resulting in observable effects in the human world’ (Gregory et al., 2009). In human geography, we also find accounts about ‘agency of things’. Gregson (2005), for instance, discusses the effects of a virus (foot and mouth disease in the UK) and the effects of the 9/11 terror attack. Concentrating our attention solely on human agency has important implications for the vocabulary and conceptual focus we are suggesting. For instance, things like oil resources can – in combination with demand for oil – produce important effects, such as the growth of the oil industry in Norway and the emergence of new regional growth paths (thus one could talk about the agency of oil resources). While such narratives are to be welcomed, for the purpose of developing a vocabulary and related conceptual frames both for empirical studies and policy purposes, we, as said, limit the use of the term agency to human only; for instance, how oil resources are intentionally used by specific actors (or groups of them) for specific purposes such as creating income and jobs would be of interest to us. Human agency refers to intentional, purposive and meaningful actions, and the intended and unintended consequences of such actions. Even though intentionality plays an important role for the emergence of agency, this does not imply that the evolution of regional paths can be attributed to intentional actions and purposive effects (Lukes, 1986). When aiming to shape path development, as Sotarauta (2016) indicates, agents are confronted with the intentions of many other agents internal and external to a region, and thus they continuously face a series of emergent forces that are beyond their control. Intentional actions of many cause effects in a region that no single actor purposively pushes for. A regional growth path can hence be seen as the nexus of intentional, purposive and meaningful actions of many actors, and the intended and unintended consequences of these actions. This article is not concerned with any actions but those of relevance for the emergence of regional growth paths, and in particular actions aiming to break from existing patterns and work towards the establishment of new ones. Likewise, Coe and Jordhus-Lier (2011) distinguish transformative agency from reproductive agency maintaining existing structures. In relation to the emergence of regional growth paths, we suggest that Schumpeterian innovative entrepreneurship, institutional entrepreneurship, and place-based leadership are the three fundamental and conceptually distinct types of transformative agency. They form an integrative and holistic framework – the trinity of change agency. First, innovative entrepreneurship is a crucial engine of change (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000; Schumpeter, 1911) because it is the source for path-breaking innovations triggering new industrial specializations and the transformation of places (Foray et al., 2009; Feldman, 4Progress in Human Geography XX(X) 2014; Grillitsch, 2018) Second, new industrial growth paths often require institutional changes to be made possible to begin with (Sotarauta and Suvinen, 2018; Granovetter, 2005; Morgan, 2016), and therefore risk-taking and opportunity oriented institutional entrepreneurship is essential as a second type of transformative agency. Third, as the emergence of new paths is a multiactor construction – contributed to and exploited by many actors – place-based leadership is important to orchestrate actions and to pool competencies, powers and resources to benefit both the actors’ individual objectives and a region more broadly (Sotarauta, 2016; Gibney et al., 2009). In the field of economics (but later mainly mobilized in the literature on entrepreneurship and innovation), Joseph Schumpeter (1911) was (probably) the first who explicitly singled out such path-breaking economic actions as willful attempts to realize novel combinations of knowledge and resources coupled with the search for a not-yet-realized potential. In other words, actions lying at the heart of the notion of Schumpeterian innovative entrepreneurship. Economic actions are, however, not isolated from other spheres of social life but deeply embedded in institutions (Granovetter, 1985; Nelson 1998). Institutions, which in very generic terms can be defined as the rules of the game, have been shown to influence the innovativeness and competitiveness of countries and regions (Gertler, 2010; Rodrı´guez-Pose, 2013; Cooke and Morgan, 1994). Actions that are directed towards transforming existing or creating new institutions are relevant for the emergence of regional growth paths because they shape preconditions for Schumpeterian innovative entrepreneurship and influence the diffusion and growth of new paths. Such actions define institutional entrepreneurship (Battilana et al., 2009) – the second type of agency included in the trinity of change agency. We refer to institutional entrepreneurship in contrast to the more generic notion of institutional work (Lawrence et al., 2009). Institutional work includes actions aiming at reproducing or strengthening the status quo while institutional entrepreneurship by definition requires the intention of bringing about change. It is about seeing the opportunities to change institutions and taking risks in doing so. Innovative and institutional entrepreneurship are conceptually distinct even though often intertwined (Grillitsch, 2018). This intertwining crystallizes, for instance, in Saxenian and Sabel’s (2008) narrative about the development of the semi-conductor industry in Taiwan, where institutional entrepreneurship was the turning point for the emergence of the new growth path. The adaptation of Silicon Valley’s venture capital system to the local context created the preconditions for successful innovative entrepreneurship. The emergence of regional growth paths is typically not associated with only one actor (exceptions may prove the rule, such as the role of Ingvar Kamprad in growing IKEA in A ¨lmhult, Sweden) but the interplay of many (Dawley, 2014; Bristow and Healy, 2014). As Garud and Karnøe (2003) maintain, agency is distributed and embedded; a variety of actors with their very specific frames and roots in different professions, industries, and sectors engage in the process of emerging growth paths. Regional path development is also a process of mobilization, coordination, and advocating for new paths (Mackinnon et al., 2018). Therefore, we introduce place-based leadership as the third element in the trinity of change agency concept. Placebased leadership captures actions that aim at transforming particular places by pooling competencies, powers and resources to benefit both agents’ individual objectives and a region more broadly (Sotarauta, 2016; Gibney et al., 2009). For instance, the possibilities for firms to innovate and grow depend on the collective resources provided regionally. The lack of important resources may be a substantial barrier for the development of new paths, may motivate Grillitsch and Sotarauta 5 Schumpeterian innovative entrepreneurs to relocate, or – to the contrary – engage in place-based leadership to build up the required resources. We argue that micro-level processes related to regional path emergence are best understood as an interplay between the three types of transformative agency. Feldman, Francis, and Bercovitz (2005) describe a case where entrepreneurs actively engaged in creating a cluster with local development officials – in our words, the interplay between innovative entrepreneurship and place-based leadership shaped the emergence of a new regional growth path. Lacking one of the three types of agency is expected to be a hindrance for the emergence of new growth paths. Sotarauta and Heinonen (2016) show how institutional change created the preconditions for the emergence of a regional growth path in regenerative medicine in Tampere, Finland, which, however, has not properly taken off due to a lack of innovative entrepreneurship (there is a lack of entrepreneuriallyoriented people, and thus also business models and products creating value from this new opportunity). The three types of agency are thus identified through intentional, purposive and meaningful actions that are directed towards creating a change to the economy, to institutions, to places. Actions are performed by agents – individuals or groups of them. This is an important conceptual stance because we want to contribute to the understanding of the emergence of growth paths from the bottom, the micro-level. The obvious next question is how to take into account organizations such as firms, universities, or public agencies. We suggest dealing with this in correspondence with structureagency theories that foreground the relational and conditional properties of agency (Jessop, 2001; Coe and Jordhus-Lier, 2011; Grillitsch, 2018). Accordingly, not all agents have the same abilities and power to cause an effect by their own actions. Agency depends on, and is conditioned by, agents’ positions in society, and hence organizations can be approached as institutionalized structures that by themselves do not produce intentional, purposive and meaningful actions – human individuals do. While we hope for a true micro-level perspective, this does not rule out organizational agency. Organizational routines and resources as well as enacted functions and goals imply that individuals occupying certain positions need to be seen in their respective organizational contexts. Organizations operate as legal entities and, as such, produce actions that affect regional growth paths. Moreover, in the empirical analysis of path development, it may be a challenge to carve out the role of individuals from that of informal groups, networks or organizations. Consequently, we acknowledge that empirical studies focusing on agency may also be conducted at a group or organizational level. The trinity of change agency can be conceptually distinguished from other types of agency. In any region, there will be agents who pursue intentional, purposive, and meaningful actions within existing growth paths. Such actions include, among others, the regular purchase, sales, and consumption of goods as well as the continuation of cluster policies aimed at strengthening existing industrial specializations. In industrial policy, subsidies to keep declining industries alive are typical examples. Moreover, some actors may even work against changes. Grabher (1993) identified politicalinstitutional lock-ins as major obstacle for change. 2 This refers to a coalition of elites – business people and policy-makers – who intentionally act against a change and for the stabilization of the status quo (see Bellandi et al., 2018). Regional growth paths result from an interplay between transformative types of agency captured by the trinity of change agency and other types of agency that are agnostic, irrelevant or even against change. As Djelic and Quack (2007) maintain, in complex multi-actor settings, path development 6Progress in Human Geography XX(X) generates emergent qualities; the realized path is never the implementation of individual intentions – it emerges from direct and/or indirect interactions with a set of them. Even though the trinity of change agency identifies intentional actions directed at creating change, these actions have both intended and unintended consequences, which both feed into regional development processes over time. Therefore, agency is best studied in its full complexity by situating it in long evolving development processes and structural changes of places (Sotarauta and Suvinen, 2018). It should also be kept in mind that change is not usually abrupt by nature but new things creep into old structures and systems as well as related institutions (Streeck and Thelen, 2005). This conceptualization allows us to disentangle overlaps between the different types of transformative agency. For continuity, we refer again to the case study on entrepreneurs creating a cluster by Feldman, Francis, and Bercovitz (2005). The story rests on agents who perform different types of actions with different effects. Some actions are pursued with the intention to introduce path-breaking innovations (innovative entrepreneurship) and some to pool competencies, powers, and resources for the creation of a strong environment for the firms in the cluster to innovate and grow (place-based leadership). These actions are distributed between various human agents. Some agents engage in both innovative entrepreneurship and placebased leadership. However, some entrepreneurs may be less concerned with creating a strong regional milieu (but as an unintended consequence still contribute to it) and some place-based leaders (e.g. politicians or regional policy-makers) may not be engaged in introducing innovations. Furthermore, who is performing which type of action may change over time. New agents may enter the scene, old agents may step down, and agents may engage in different types of actions at different points in time. Actions are linked to agents who differ in capabilities and power due to their experience, background and position in society. 2 Innovative entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship is about discovering and exploiting opportunities to create value. Shane and Venkataraman (2000: 219) maintain that entrepreneurship as a field of study is interesting for three reasons: first [ ...] entrepreneurship is a mechanism by which society converts technical information into [...] products and services. Second, entrepreneurship is a mechanism through which temporal and spatial inefficiencies in an economy are discovered and mitigated (Kirzner, 1997). Finally, of the different sources of change in a capital society, Schumpeter (1934) isolated entrepreneurially driven innovation in products and processes as the crucial engine driving the change process. In this paper, we are most interested in the third aspect, innovative entrepreneurship as a driving force for change. Beyond building firms, innovative entrepreneurs are contributing to transforming regional economies and shaping new growth paths (Feldman et al., 2005; Lawton Smith, 2003). Innovative entrepreneurship in the Schumpeterian sense concerns breaking with existing paths and working towards the establishment of new ones. Hence, it is a process that may originate unexpected regional growth paths and consequently is of major concern for this paper. The unexpectedness of Schumpeterian innovative entrepreneurship lies in the nature of the process where knowledge and resources are combined in novel ways (Schumpeter, 1911), typically across sectors and industries (Strambach and Klement, 2012), and with uncertain outcome. The distinction made by Schumpeter in economic actions that are grounded in past experience as opposed to those that are driven by a belief in future opportunities is essential. The former relies on market and technological knowledge from past interactions, which is Grillitsch and Sotarauta 7 projected into the future. For the latter, the market is not known, might not even exist for a given product, and the technological feasibility is not established. The former actions will promote a continuation along existing industrial paths while the latter are attempts to break with them. An essential trait of Schumpeterian innovative entrepreneurship is therefore the will to realize something new (Schumpeter, 1911), to ‘map unknown terrain, to move where no-one dared venture before’ (Weik, 2011). According to Shane and Venkataraman (2000), entrepreneurship can be understood as nexus of the presence of opportunities and the presence of individuals that perceive and strive to realize these opportunities. In some locations and time periods, entrepreneurs will find more opportunities than in others depending on the regional industrial composition (Boschma et al., 2017; Grillitsch and Asheim, 2018), the possibilities to tap knowledge and resources from extra-regional sources (Trippl et al., 2017), the support structure for innovation and entrepreneurship (Mason and Brown, 2014; Asheim and Gertler, 2005), as well as the institutional environment supporting or hindering Schumpeterian innovative entrepreneurship (Fritsch and Wyrwich, 2014; Morgan, 2016). 3 Institutional entrepreneurship Schumpeter’s early theorizing acknowledged the importance of institutions for innovative entrepreneurship in modern capitalism. He saw innovative entrepreneurship as an endogenous development force with a capacity to generate economic growth, if only institutions favored entrepreneurial activity. In line with Mazzucato’s (2015) argument, we acknowledge that institutional influences not only constrain but also make innovative entrepreneurship possible. Earlier studies show that path creation may be explained both by the strong presence of innovative entrepreneurship and institutional factors (Holmen and Fosse, 2017; Dawley, 2014; Sotarauta and Suvinen, 2018). Therefore, we find it crucial to better understand how institutions change and what actors consciously do to change them so that they would better support innovative entrepreneurship and regional growth. It is institutions that frame what is suitable, and actions deviating from prevailing institutions are often sanctioned, one way or another. Institutions are constraining, enabling and incentivizing structures for change but also objects of change (Soskice, 1999). In regional development studies, institutions are seen as a set of rules, regulations and constraints, on the one hand, and organizations in the form of economic, political, social and educational bodies, on the other hand (Storper, 1997; Rodrı´guez-Pose and Storper, 2006). By definition, they are the elements of permanence and stability, as they are fairly immune to change. Institutions are carriers of social practices and routines (David, 1994), and institutional reproduction passes ingredients of the present and past into the future (Martin, 2000). The institutional approach has been criticized for predicating compliance and conformity, and its limited capacity to explain institutional change and thus also regional transformations. Therefore, the concept has been more useful in the analysis of path dependency than path creation. This critique, for its part, has generated increasing interest in the role of agency in institutional change and thus also institutional entrepreneurship (Sotarauta and Pulkkinen, 2011). Therefore, we position the concept of institutional entrepreneurship into the trinity of change agency and approach it as a force molding rules of the game and playing fields for innovative entrepreneurs to surface and succeed. Institutional entrepreneurs are individuals or groups of individuals but also organizations or groups of organizations that originate change processes contributing to the creation of new institutions and/or transformation of existing ones (Battilana et al., 2009). As Battilana et al. (2009: 67) further say, ‘they are actors who 8Progress in Human Geography XX(X) initiate divergent changes and actively participate in the implementation of them’. Institutional entrepreneurs challenge existing rules and practices and institutionalize the alternative rules and practices they are championing (DiMaggio, 1988). Broadly speaking, Pacheco et al. (2010) identify two lines of enquiry in the study of institutional entrepreneurship. The first defines institutional entrepreneurs broadly as change agents that do not necessarily have a selfinterest in the issues at hand. The focus is essentially on informal and socially embedded institutions; institutionalized practices and belief systems; and the processes of institutionalization and related change strategies. The second line of enquiry, according to Pacheco et al. (2010), sees institutional entrepreneurs as change agents driven by economic motivation and a self-interest. In this thinking, they are profit-seekers and exploiters of economic opportunities. Consequently, the focus is more on formal institutions (property rights, government policy) than informal ones, and thus also on functional and economic pressures, market conditions and transaction costs as well as contractual and self-enforcement strategies (Pacheco et al., 2010). If in the first approach the analytical effort focuses on processes of institutionalization, the second one is more interested in the outcomes of it. For our efforts to better understand the trinity of change agency in regional growth, both interpretations of institutional entrepreneurship are valid, as innovative entrepreneurs may end up changing institutions with or without economic self-interest. 4 Place-based leadership Almost as a general rule, various actors participate in regional development efforts with the aim to find something for themselves. They do not leave their own interests, drivers, incentives and overseers behind. Thus, it is far from easy to find a common ground for a collective development effort in these kinds of situations. Regional development, and related institutional changes, is essentially about sustained and possibly conflicting encounters of various visions of single organizations, individual interests and a whole range of ideas. Contrary to the common assumption, it is notoriously difficult to construct a shared vision providing a heterogeneous bunch of actors with a sense of direction. Conscious efforts to stimulate the emergence of a regional growth path and construct conditions for it require agents who work to determine the direction for change through, with and by other actors, and convene and inspire them. Studies on place-based leadership aim at identifying the genuine, but often shadowed, processes of influence to better understand what people actually do to influence other people in these very particular types of settings both formally and informally – openly as well as opaquely – and how they go about doing what they do. It is also about revealing the types of social processes involved in ‘making things happen’ and in ‘getting things done’ (or not getting things done). (Sotarauta et al., 2017: 188) We find this important as, in the context of regional development, we are called to fill the conceptual and empirical gap between the fallacious heroic leadership discourse and what really happens in regions (the need to go beyond heroic leadership is widely recognized, e.g. Reicher et al., 2005). In regional development, the capability to orient complex multi-actor processes in an indirect manner is the key for successful efforts to influence the emergence of new paths (MacNeill and Steiner, 2010). Sotarauta and Beer (2017: 212) argue that place-based ‘leaders as individuals, and groups of individuals, tend to possess a greater range and depth of assets – including commitment to advancing the region – than other actors’. As such, placebased leadership comprises varying approaches but is intrinsically concerned with (a) launching Grillitsch and Sotarauta 9 eye may shape opportunity spaces and thereby possible regional futures too. Acknowledgements We are thankful for comments of the Regional Growth Against All Odds project team. Declaration of conflicting interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article: This research was supported by a grant from La¨nsfo¨rsa¨kringar Alliance Research Foundation, Sweden (Grant Number: 2017/01/011). ORCID iD Markus Grillitsch https://orcid.org/0000-00028406-4727 Notes 1. We follow Boschma (2004) in defining regions not as administrative units but territorial contexts with a bearing on the behavior and performance of local organizations, which in turn depends on the embeddedness of local actors in place-specific production and innovation networks, competence and knowledge bases, and institutional environments. As this functional embeddedness changes over time and differs between places, regions are no fixed, predefined entities. Instead, the relevant territorial context can only be unveiled empirically. 2. 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Author biographies Markus Grillitsch is Associated Professor in Economic Geography at the Department of Human Geography and deputy director of CIRCLE, Lund University. His research focusses on regional development and innovation addressing uneven regional development; agency and structural change related to technological change, globalisation, and sustainability transitions; knowledge dynamics, diversity and innovation; as well as regional development and innovation policy. Markku Sotarauta is Professor of Regional Development Studies in the Faculty of Management and Business at Tampere University, Finland. He specialises in innovation systems and policy, leadership, and institutional entrepreneurship in city and regional development. 20 Progress in Human Geography XX(X)