Explaining knowledge-intensive activities from a regional perspective

Knowledge-intensive activities (KIAs) are a fundamental part of innovation. In turn, innovation drives economic growth and regional development. Logically, therefore, understanding the factors that are conducive to KIAs is important for regions to plan and build toward a sustainable future. The literature discusses a host of environmental factors that affect a region's capacity to engage in KIAs. Adopting a regional focus, this study discusses these factors and presents a causal model to explain how these environmental antecedents affect KIAs. The study then presents an application of fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze knowledge-intensive activities in 181 European regions across 22 countries. The analysis shows that several causal configurations of environmental factors are conducive to KIAs. Accordingly, the study discusses the policy implications of these findings.