This book shows, first of all, that leadership plays a crucial role in reinventing regions and branching out from an old path to something new in order to create more balanced and sustainable regional development. Second, it maintains that leadership is not a solo but a multi-agent and -level activity and that it needs to be discussed and studied as such. Third, as the book argues, leadership is shaped differently in various institutional and cultural contexts and on different scales. This book explores the ways leadership plays our in regional development context contributing to economically, socially and ecologically balanced sustainable future.

1. Putting Leadership in the Sustainable Regional Development Context Markku Sotarauta, Ina Horlingsand Joyce Liddle 2. Leadership of place and the dynamics of knowledge John Gibney 3. Sustaining collaborative leadership in city-regions: An examination of local enterprise partnerships in England Joyce Little 4. Leadership and scale Frans Padt 5. Learning about leadership from the experience of the voluntary and commjnity sector in the UK John Diamond 6. Adaptation, adjustment and leadership in Australia's rural margins Andrew Beer and Emma Baker 7. The interplay between social capital, leadership and policy arrangements in European rural regions Lummina Horlings 8. Socially embedded leadership Kristine Peters 9. Leadership and institutional change: Economic restructuring, sense of place and social capital in Emmaste, Estoia Garri Raagmaa, Grete Kindel and Matti Lüsi 10. Strategic leadership relay: How to keep a regional innovation journey in motion? Markku Sotarauta and Nina Mustikkamäki 11. Emergence of shared leadership in situations of conflict - Mission impossible? Long-term experiences from a local policy network in the Basque Country James Carlsen and Miren Lorrea 12. Complexity leadership for sustainable regional innovations Catrien Termeer and Sibout Nooteboom 13. Value-oriented leadership in the Netherlands Ina Horlings 14. Knowledge leadership for resilient regions: Concluding remarks Markku Satarauta & Ina Horlings & Joyce Liddle

Markku Sotarauta is Dean and Professor of Regional Studies at the School of Management, University of Tampere, Finland.

Lummina Horlings is in the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

Joyce Liddle is Professor at Teesside Business School, University of Teesside, UK.