Abstract

This chapter examines and demonstrates superior regional innovation policy making based on non-linear, lateral and interactive governance. The first section introduces basic concepts of resilience, modeled on its original application in understanding ecosystem behavior under stress, translated into a more suitable economic geography context. There follows a worked, theoretically derived application of resilience theory to qualitative case analyses of responses to resilience shock by regions in Portugal. Here, severe economic crisis was the test of resilience. Innovative adaptability, emphasizing transversality, not particularity, tended to predominate. In conclusion, it is shown how, by exploration of regional and inter-regional “transversality,” these regions avoided “global controller” (EU) advocacy of demonstrably reckless “specialization.” This was achieved in the face of imposed austerity policies from EU and national state in response to the global financial crash of 2008 as it affected the fate of their Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS3).