Barriers to regional industrial development: An analysis of two specialised industrial regions in Norway

ABSTRACT The article aims to broaden the understanding of barriers to regional industrial development by focusing on the use and modification of the regional asset base. The authors employ Maskell & Malmberg’s categorisation of assets and they regard asset modification through change agency as a vital part of regional industrial development. They aim both to complement Grabher’s ‘lock-in’ approach and to provide a wider understanding of how barriers can be lowered through their empirical investigation of two specialised regions in Norway, Stavanger and Grenland. The authors address three research questions: What are historically created key regional assets in the two specialised regions? Do the assets function as support or barriers to green path development? If they are barriers, what are key agencies for lowering them? The findings demonstrate that the regional asset base functions both as support and as a barrier. To lower the barriers, both asset reuse and asset creation are deployed by actors in the region. The authors conclude that the article’s two main contributions are that with regard to the regional asset base, a relevant framework can identify possible barriers to regional industrial development, and the finding that barriers can be lowered through asset modification.