Where innovation meets directionality: an index to measure regional readiness to deal with societal challenges

The growing interest in addressing societal challenges is changing research and innovation policy dynamics. However, a challenge-oriented approach requires specific public sector capacities to coordinate and provide directionality, while having an innovation ecosystem with sufficient scientific and technological capabilities to address the grand societal challenges effectively. From this perspective, a challenge-oriented policy is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and the literature has only recently started investigating the territorial differences. The current paper proposes a composite index to assess REgional Societal Challenges-Oriented REadiness (RE-SCORE). An exploratory experimental application is conducted to examine and compare Italian regions facing four selected societal challenges (SCs): bioeconomy, climate change, health and inclusive, innovative and reflective societies. The findings show that the Italian regional readiness to address SCs is highly heterogeneous, going beyond the ‘traditional’ North-South divide. The index allows us to benchmark regional capacities for comparative analysis and to identify possible interregional synergies around specific SCs. This approach could be used in other European countries and at the European level to assess the regional readiness to tackle SCs.