Mapping Knowledge Territories for Development Policies

In an increasingly connected world, the studies of regional economic systems face new challenges. Notions like “knowledge asset”, “intellectual capital”, “cognitive capability” and similar are increasingly crucial to understand the trajectories of growth of local economies. But what identifies an economic system in cognitive terms? Are the usual notions and approaches still relevant? How can we update them? Actually, even if it is widely accepted that cognitive assets are a central resource for economic development, the focus on the nature of “knowledge” and the way it can be handled for policy-making purposes is still insufficient. For instance, knowledge has been often treated as a generic component of innovation, or just considered in its “objective” forms. Also, inadequate efforts have being made to characterise regional systems in a “cognitive way”. All this reflects on the policy-making approaches that often base on the protection of tangible assets rather than the enhancement of the cognitive potentials. Starting from such limitations, the paper aims to explore the contribution that the fields of Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management can give to the definition of novel approaches to mapping economic territories, and, accordingly, to delineate new policy instruments.