1 Regional innovation policy and public-private partnerships Iryna Kristensen 1 , Ronald W. McQuaid and Walter Scherrer Introduction For innovation policies to become effective, smoothly functioning interfaces between innovation agents, assembling resources from diverse sectors of the economy, and sound strategy development and policy implementation are all required. Connecting independent innovation agents is a core feature of several theories of innovation, for example: systemic approaches to innovation (Asheim et al. 2011; Cooke 2002; Nelson 1993; Lundvall 1992; Freeman 1988); the triple-helix approach (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 1997); the learning region approach (Morgan 1997; Florida 1995, 2002), and the smart specialization approach (Foray et al. 2009). Further, innovation is usually characterized by increasing returns to knowledge implementation and diffusion, which typically takes on both public and private goods attributes. Forming partnerships for innovation and balancing public and private interests can play a significant part in combining innovation-relevant resources such as technical expertise, production capacities, regulatory power, user requirements, and finance which are spread out among multiple agents. An instrument for connecting agents in innovation policy is public private partnerships (PPP), which are – loosely defined – a co-operative institutional arrangement between public and private sector agents (Hodge and Greve 2007).