Territorial dynamic, innovative milieus and regional policy

The change in the hierarchy of regions, observed during the past 20 years, is mainly due to development phenomena, which originated within these regions themselves. The concept of innovative milieu enables us to understand better these phenomena, because it is based on the assumption that there are specific territorial dynamics capable of setting up territorial development of innovation. This paper recalls the origin of the concept of innovative milieu, which is relatively new in the field of regional science, and it aims to give an accurate definition of this concept. Furthermore, the paper shows that the concept of innovative milieu allows regional policy to be considered from a new perspective. In fact, if the territory is not given a priori, but built thanks to the dynamics of the milieus, one can consider that regional collectives have the possibility of promoting and initiating real territorial development.