Smart specialisation for regional economic transformation (original) (raw)
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Studia Regionalia, 2017
In the 2014-2020 programming period, two new tools were introduced by the EU cohesion policy, namely Smart Specialisation (SS) and Integrated Territorial Investments (ITI). Their implementation aims at contributing on the one hand to activating and strengthening endogenic potentials, including those based on knowledge and innovation, and on the other hand to territorialisation of intervention for the purpose of obtaining competitive advantages or regions. The tools are based on two concepts of the development policy: smart specialisation and place-based and territorial approach to development. The article presents the rationale and prospective impact of the implementation of the tools on development programming of selected regions of Poland. Detailed analyses cover the provisions of the ITI Strategy of the Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) of Poznań (Wielkopolskie Voivodeship), Subregion Centralny (Śląskie Voivodeship), and Lublin (Lubelskie Voivodeship), as well as regional and national operational programmes in terms of potential contribution of the implementation of ITI to the strengthening of regional SS in some of the Polish region. The analyses performed for the three groups of Thematic Objectives (TO) of ESIF 2014-2020 (corresponding with 3 pillars of the Europe 2020 Strategy), i.e. 'smart'-TO 1-3; 'sustainable'-TO 4-7; and 'inclusive'-TO 8-10, show that the 'sustainable' group (in majority represented by companies from sections F, H) refers to infrastructure projects, often of a transport network; the 'inclusive' group is ascribed to companies from sections Q and P to generally 'soft' projects related to the development of social services, and 'smart' is related to sections M, F, J. Only in the case of 8% of projects (out of 78 analysed) it was stipulated that preferences would be given to the existing or newly established companies the profile of activity of which corresponds to regional SS. Such projects deal with the support for companies in the scope of business incubators and expansion of vocational education infrastructure in terms of adjustment to the needs of key sectors selected in RIS3 strategies of particular regions. In all of the analysed FUAs, ITI measures support regional SS in the framework of TO 3 and TO 10. The projects will be primarily implemented by companies from PCA sections M, F and P. The proposed methodology gives prospects to the analysis of future impact of interventions on the growth of the smart specialisation potential of the analysed FUAs PC.
Regional Innovation Ecosystems and Smart Specialization: Opportunities and Challenges for Regions
Revista Brasileira de Gestão e Desenvolvimento Regional, 2020
Global competition is today a reality and making smart regions smarter through smart specialization is currently on the political and economic agenda of territories. This study aims to contribute to clarifying the framework for the regional innovation ecosystems as well as identifying new research paths. Through extensive research using the Web of Science database with resource to a bibliometric analysis on smart specialization, six clusters were identified: cluster 1-innovation networks and triple helix; cluster 2-regional innovation systems; cluster 3-regional innovation network; cluster 4-smart innovation policies; cluster 5-smart specialization; and cluster 6-Asian innovation systems. Several future lines of research recently published in literature distributed by the six clusters were identified. This study also contributes to open new research horizons in these areas of knowledge, allowing the emergence of new streams of thought on the part of scholars, policymakers, economic agents and society in general.
Implementing Smart Specialisation Strategies: A Handbook
2016
Smart Specialisation represents the most comprehensive industrial policy experiment being implemented in Europe. Conceived within the reformed Cohesion policy of the European Commission, Smart Specialisation is a place-based policy promoting economic transformation and investment in innovative activities in selected areas of the socio-economic system in order to achieve a smart, inclusive and sustainable growth. Drawing on empirical evidence, the Smart Specialisation Implementation Handbook is targeted at policy-makers and regional development professionals who are crafting their innovation policy according to a common set of principles and methodologies. The handbook aims at taking stock of the Smart Specialisation experience and presenting its current state of the art, both in terms of conceptual developments and practical implementation. It addresses five key milestones of the implementation process: 1) The Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) cycle: from priority selection to...
Smart Specialisation Strategy Development in the Finnish Regions
2017
The European Union (EU) has adopted smart specialisation as an innovation (industry) policy framework to boost innovation and economic growth in EU regions. The central element of smart specialisation is Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) that can be defined as a bottom-up process involving businesses, research sites, public organizations and civil society working together to identify region’s most promising specialisation areas and to overcome the potential weaknesses that hamper innovation. Despite the widely recognized status of EDP as a driver of regional innovation and economic transformation, its operationalisation is still a challenge. We set out to investigate this with a research question: “What are the key factors underlying EDP and how to implement them for supporting entrepreneurial discovery in the region?” To answer this question we adopted a grounded theory approach and explored the dynamics of EDP through a case study in Finnish regions. Based on our interviews ...
Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 2018
The paper takes smart specialisation strategies as the point of departure and frame of reference for the discussion of innovation policies and regional innovation systems. It aims to demonstrate that the regional innovation systems approach, representing a dynamic perspective on innovation and learning in the promotion of international competitiveness and economic growth, is an instrumental policy tool for the design and implementation of smart specialisation strategies. Moreover, the paper discusses different types of new path development, especially emphasising development paths that represent transformative activities in the form of path diversification based on unrelated knowledge combinations and new path creation, and how such path development can be achieved. The paper argues that such new path development, implying increased complexity of technology and knowhow but low relatedness, does not constitute a "casino strategy" as argued by Balland et al. (Balland, P.-A., et al. 2017. "Smart Specialisation in the EU: Relatedness, Knowledge Complexity and Regional Diversification." Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography, Utrecht University.), but a transformative activity or long jumps with the potential of "generating new options for subsequent structural transformation" (Hidalgo, C. A., B. Klinger, A.-L. Barabási, and R. Hausmann. 2007. "The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations." Science 317: 482-487). As such these radical forms of new path development should be in the scope of policy makers even if they represent "high risk/high benefit" alternatives. The analytical framework is applied on a moderate innovative, Eastern European region (Mazovia) of the EU.
2017
The paper aims at investigating how EU Regions should incorporate the place-based approach (Barca, 2009) to plan their Research and Innovation Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3) within the current Programming Period 2014-2020. Smart Specialisation Strategies become a key factor to stimulate private investment, and "should be integrated into regional development strategies in order to ensure an effective partnership between civil society, businesses and public authorities at regional, national and European levels" (EC, 2010). The link envisaged between S3 and place-based approach is based on their characterization of a development policy, and on the value of the different geographical, social, economic features that territories can express (Foray, 2000). The transformation of these two theoretical approaches into policy is recognizable in two drivers for programming the Agenda 2020. The first is the Theory of Change, which implies the use of "indicators" related to the value that different territories can express to control and measure the expected change. The second is more related to stimulate at regional level an integrated approach to reach a critical mass of the investment effects/impacts. The MAPS-LED Research Project (Horizon2020) perspective is described as a way to investigate how is possible to regenerate local economic areas through S3 considering place-based approach.
SMART SPECIALISATION STRATEGY-THE CASE OF SMALL COUNTRY
The key objective of the strategy of smart specialisation, as defined by the EU, is to set priorities at national and regional level to build competitive advantage by developing and matching research and innovation own strengths with business needs. This paper explores the concept of the first Lisbon Strategy, which was launched in 2000 as a response to the challenges of globalization, the growing gap in innovation capability between the USA and the EU and transition to knowledge based society and economy. Furthermore, it explains the logic of smart specialisation strategy and it analyses the complexity of designing RIS3 and the risks, associated with selection of priority areas and concentration of development funding on the selection, on the case of Slovenia, as a small, R&D less intensive country. The main claim of this article is that while there are potentially important benefits to be derived from RIS3, the process of adopting of smart specialisation strategy in a small member state carries a much higher level of risk than in the case of more developed regions in a bigger country.