Support and Facilitation for Rural Regional Learning and Innovation: No “One Size Fits All” Solution

In the era of globalisation, regionally embedded capacities are crucial for the development of resilient, selfefficient rural regions. Thereby, negotiations and collective learning processes in rural grassroots development initiatives are keys to success. By supporting and facilitating collective learning that leads to the building of required human and social capacities, public administration and the knowledge infrastructure can contribute to their success and impact. The central question is therefore how public support and facilitation of collective learning and innovation in rural grassroots development initiatives can best be arranged? The support and facilitation of regional learning and innovation has received considerable scientific and political attention in economic core regions, focussing on the spill-over of new, scientific expert knowledge and capacities from academia to industry. In contrast to economic core regions, however, rural regional development is characterised by a joint effort of different actors and an interaction of diverse development activities. The support and facilitation of these processes have not received much scientific attention so far. Based on empirical results within six European case study areas of the European FP7 project DERREG, this paper will present different ways of arranging support and facilitation for rural regional learning and innovation across the European Union. The results show that the best way to arrange support and facilitation for learning and innovation is highly context dependent and there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution as in economic core regions.