A Knowledge Hub enabling Regional Innovation Leadership

In this paper we provide a model of a knowledge management system – a Knowledge Hub (KH) – enabling Regional Innovation Leadership (RIL), which refers to a conceptual framework of RIL processes. The paper goes through: 1. Representing the Regional Innovation Leadership (RIL) cycle using the "Region-Enterprise" metaphor, inspired to the "… collective capacity of a regional community to initiate and sustain significant changes to work effectively with forces that shape change …" (Senge, 2000); 2. Illustrating the main characteristics of a community of practice (CoP), here conceived as a group of people informally bound together by shared expertise and position for a joint enterprise (Wenger and Suyden, 1999). Our focus is on CoPs as leverages of knowledge development and diffusion; 3. Describing the KH model, conceived as that supports the RIL of a region; 4. Proposing the values that originate from the KH initiative for several CoPs of regional development; this in the perspective of sustaining the reflective process through diffusion of codified knowledge arising from evaluation, support to discussions and forums, delivering of online questionnaires, preparation of workshops and conferences on sector / cluster basis. The RIL cycle summarizes several contributions converging on the key role of knowledge as a leading factor of innovation and competitiveness, supported by appropriate methods and tools to: - Promote cluster based development; - Foster interactive learning and innovation; - Sustain regional policy institutions in diminishing lock-in and institutionalized thinking; - Understand market-based and cooperatively-based knowledge governance mechanism under the conditions of the Net Economy. More specifically, our focal point is on: - The learning processes that develop in the CoPs of a region; - Strategies and policies to sustain these CoPs learning processes. In this view, the KH is conceived as a Knowledge Management System enabling RIL processes. It aims to create strategic links among innovation, knowledge and learning, in order to shape an effective context for promoting CoPs, enhancing the regional intellectual capital, and sustaining significant changes in the region’s organizations. The KH’s value proposition is linked to the interest of regional CoPs in the process by which innovation takes hold and expands in regional industry, foreign direct investments are attracted, competitiveness is enhanced.