In turn, it is necessary to avoid “picking winners”: promoting the development high-tech industries in regions that lack the adequate human and physical endowments is likely to become a failed policy and a major waste of public resources (Hospers and Beugelsdijk, 2002, Todtling and Trippl, 2005). For example, to tackle territorial disparities with regard to research, development and innovation capacities in the United States, the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) provides awards to territorial jurisdictions to foster their research capabilities and improve their science and engineering research and education programmes. One of the programme’s tracks provides selected jurisdictions with up to USD 20 million for five years to support physical, human and cyberinfrastructure improvements in research areas identified as having the best potential to improve the jurisdiction’s R&D competitiveness.