Smart specialization in a centralized state: strengthening the regional contribution in North East Romania

ABSTRACT

Regional Innovation Strategies 3 (RIS3) are intended to promote the economic transformation of European Union (EU) regions, particularly those that are lagging in development. The introduction of RIS3 has not been without its critics. This is not unexpected given its rapid, and, for some, rather hasty, move from conceptual idea to mainstream EU policy. This paper explores the introduction of the RIS3 approach in North East Romania, one of the EU’s least developed regions. Whilst Romania has launched a national RIS3, the Regional Development Agency for North East Romania also voluntarily embarked upon a process of developing a regional RIS3 for the North East region. This provides a valuable opportunity to explore different spatial dimensions of the smart specialization approach and offers the opportunity to consider the extent to which active and well-regarded research actors can act as anchors to a RIS3 approach in a less developed region. The paper argues that whilst the experience of developing a regional RIS3 offers strong learning benefits, the effectiveness of this will be dependent on supporting institutional structures.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart specialization
• regional innovation
• governance
• entrepreneurial discovery
• less developed regions

Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was undertaken as part of the FP7 project SmartSpec. The author gratefully acknowledges the comments of two anonymous referees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The period 1994–2007 was a time of regional innovation experimentation, which arguably laid the foundations for RIS3 and smart specialization. Initial pilot actions developing Regional Technology Plans were followed by actions promoting the development of RIS and RIS+, Regional Innovation and Technology Transfer Strategies and a later generation of RIS in the EU’s new member states.

2. The EU defines Less Developed Regions as those with an average GDP per capita of less than 75% of the EU average. For the purposes of this paper, the author follows the EU’s terminology, where ‘region’ refers to the NUTS2 statistical unit of the EU.

3. The Smart Specialization Platform is part of the EU’s Joint Research Council and provides professional advice to EU countries and regions for the design and implementation of their RIS3. As part of this process, it facilitated a number of Peer Review seminars bringing together regions to discuss the design of their RIS3.

4. The region itself identified the following clusters: clothes and footwear, biomedicine, tourism, agro-food, wine, pharmacy, ICT and wood, demonstrating a strong consistency with its RIS3 exercise.

Additional information

Funding

The author gratefully acknowledges the support received from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development, and demonstration [grant number 320131].