Innovation policies deserve a sound monitoring system: an agenda for policy makers

Introduction Innovation is surely a matter of ‘life and death’ in the capitalism of the twenty-first century as it is at the origin of the growing divergence between successful and lagging regions in the EU. There is evidence (Crescenzi and Rodríguez-Pose 2009) that this divergence reflects the differences between innovation-prone regions – where there is a strong policy support for innovative firms and innovation infrastructures – and innovation-averse regions where relevant policy support is much less developed and backward (Rodríguez-Pose 1999).