Regional Development Platform based on ‘Related Variety’: Some Evidencesfrom Tuscany

A recent contribution to regional/local development is the Regional Development Platform (RDP), a tool oflocal policy and governance meant for the planning and implementation of a regional innovation systemwith a sustainable and long-lasting competitive advantage. The aim of the present work is to contribute to the debate on local economic development throughplatforms of regional development, offering some specific cases in which the RDP model is developed notonly as a top-down policy tool in support to innovation, but also as a bottom-up governance tool for therelationships among cognitively-related industries. Finally, we also introduce the idea of the platform as ‘apublic space’ able to foster ideas and innovations through cross-fertilisation according to a Related-varietyapproach.