Regional industrial restructuring: Asset modification and alignment for digitalization

Abstract This paper provides a conceptual framework to understand the innovation‐based restructuring of industries in a regional context. The framework includes how firms create new assets, reuse existing assets, and overcome hampering barriers to support innovation processes. The framework also covers how such asset modifications take place at the innovation system level. A core argument is that innovation activity is strengthened and regional restructuring supported when firms’ internal assets are aligned with assets at the regional innovation system level. We illustrate the framework with empirical examples of how digitalization as an innovation process takes place in firms in traditional manufacturing industries and in local newspapers in the Agder region in southern Norway.