How outward looking is smart specialisation? Rationales, drivers and barriers

ABSTRACT

The emergence of Smart Specialisation as place-based policy has attracted much scholarly debate. However, interest on the topic has been devoted principally to the process of entrepreneurial discovery and its embedded selective mechanisms for R&I policy. This paper focuses on a less investigated dimension of Smart Specialisation, and specifically on the capacity of S3 to contribute to inter-regional connectivity via the outward looking approach to cooperation promoted by Smart Specialisation policies. In doing so, we use original data collected from a survey of EU regions and neighbouring countries and complemented by in-depth interviews. The survey collates information on instruments of collaboration and discusses drivers and barriers encountered by the regions during the implementation of their outward looking strategies of collaboration. Our results suggest that, while the value of collaboration and the options offered by the outward looking feature of S3 are widely recognised, lack of political commitment, relational inertia and complexities associated to joint programming and availability of R&I instruments are hampering the development of long-term collaborations between regions in EU.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart specialisation
• interregional collaboration
• innovation policy
• policy integration
• outward orientation

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Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Elvira Uyarra http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3144-1741

Chiara Marzocchi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0283-5306

Notes

1 Under article 70(2)(c) of the Common Provisions Regulation, regions can fund actors from another region with up to 15% of the total funds for the priority axis if the benefits from this collaboration exceeds 5%. However the costs need to be shared on a pro rata basis by both regions’ Operational Programmes.

2 The Smart Specialisation Platform provides professional advice to EU countries and regions for the design and implementation of their research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3). http://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu.

3 Given the size of the sample and according to relevant literature (Hair et al., 2016), comments on the factors for both drivers and barriers are offered only for those components that present a threshold value in the factor loading meaningfully above 0.4.

4 This is an iniative where several EU regions collaborate based on their Smart Specialisation strategies. http://www.s3vanguardinitiative.eu/.

5 ERRIN is a Brussels-based platform of around 120 regional stakeholder organizations promoting knowledge exchange and joint actions and partnerships to strengthen regional research and innovation capacities.