Different paths, same outcome: System-level agency across the RIS-CORIS continuum

Abstract

Regional innovation systems (RIS) and challenge-oriented regional innovation systems (CORIS) represent competing ideal types along a continuum from market-driven to sustainability-oriented innovation governance. Yet how these ideal types manifest empirically, and what forms of system-level agency emerge across this continuum, remains largely unexamined. Drawing on 47 semi-structured expert interviews in Zurich and Helsinki - two European innovation leaders selected through a most different systems design - and analysed through an inductive-deductive thematic coding approach, this paper shows that neither case conforms neatly to either ideal type. Both cities occupy intermediate positions on the RIS-CORIS continuum, with Zurich exhibiting a market-driven logic in which sustainability is contingent on economic viability, and Helsinki a challenge-oriented configuration in which economic development remains a constitutive co-goal. System-level agency operates through fundamentally different mechanisms in each case: resource mobilization through contractual arrangements in Zurich, and the active construction of institutional rationales in Helsinki. Despite these differences, both cases achieve comparable levels of regional innovation capacity - a finding consistent with equifinality across the continuum. Two shared structural limitations are identified: a persistent science-policy translation gap and multi-scalar governance dependencies that constrain regional actors regardless of system orientation. These findings advance the empirical understanding of hybrid RIS configurations and carry direct implications for regions seeking to reconfigure their innovation systems towards challenge orientation.