There is a growing recognition of the importance of the creation of new industrial specialisations for sustained regional growth. However, path dependency often limits a region’s ability to do so, as the occurrence of new industrial specialisations is conditioned by its existing industrial base. In this paper, we use data for 269 NUTS-2 EU regions to examine whether regional Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and Research and Development (R&D) enhance the capacity of regions to specialise in new industries, against the forces of path dependence. Our findings show that both KIBS and R&D exercise direct positive effects on the creation of new industry specialisations and that professional-KIBS and public R&D impact negatively on the relatedness of new specialisations, while private R&D does so positively.

人们越来越认识到创建新的工业专业化对持续区域增长的重要性。然而，路径依赖往往限制了一个地区这样做的能力，因为新工业专业化的出现取决于其现有的工业基础。在本文中，我们使用 269 个 NUTS-2 欧盟地区的数据来检验地区知识密集型商业服务 (KIBS) 和研发 (R&D) 是否增强了地区专门从事新产业的能力，对抗路径依赖的力量. 我们的研究结果表明，KIBS 和 R&D 都对新行业专业化的创建产生直接的积极影响，专业 KIBS 和公共 R&D 对新专业化的相关性产生负面影响，而私人研发则产生积极影响。