| Abstract: | Inward investment is often understood as an inadequate instrument for self-sustained growth and as being responsible for the insufficient development of peripheral areas. Globalization and increasing competition within the markets, however, changed the firms' and regions' adjustment environment, and led to the convergence of spatial strategies of the large innovative firms and the development strategies of regional and local governments. This process contributes toward the integration of the external firms within local productive systems and, therefore, large innovative firms can play a relevant role in endogenous development processes. Although the convergence of strategies is not a phenomenon that can be generalized for all types of firms and territories, a new line of action opens up that permits improved productive restructuring and economic development, even in less favoured and peripheral regions. |
