Creative Minds and Commercial Spirits Innovation and Rents from Natural Resources in Remote Maritime Regions

Abstract

The aim if this paper is to understand the attitudes of “creative minds and commercial spirits” in remote maritime regions within the challenge of the European Marine Strategy. The main hypothesis to be exploited, focusing on the growing search of new maritime resources, is that innovation can be seen as a rent seeking phenomena not only through time – as is commonly understood in a Schumpeterian perspective but also throughout space, where the allocation or appropriation of property rights play a crucial role. We look into the attitudes of key marine stakeholders in Horta related to changes in marine property rights implicit in the European Marine Strategy. We conclude that innovation and development in remote areas is strongly related to the influence that innovative entrepreneurs have on the redefinition of property rights and related allocation of rents from natural resources.