The rapidly changing pattern of regional competitiveness across the globe, as captured by the WCIR indicators, has been explored in previous chapters, making it clear that many regions outside the Western economies of Europe and North America are increasingly coming to the fore. The analysis presented in the preceding chapters provide a potential explanation for the perceived troubles experienced by the European regions, which are viewed as lagging their counterparts in the US (Gardiner et al., 2004). In general, the evolutionary nature of regional development is considered to have made it difficult for many European regions to adapt sufficiently to the accelerating process of globalization (Camagni and Capello, 2012).