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S3 Newsletter
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Joint Research Centre
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In this issue
- April 2021
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S3 Platform
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Highlights
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15 April
2021
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Smart Specialisation for the Recovery Workshop
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This event aims to highlight how Smart Specialisation can be an effective tool to help territories recover from the current pandemic-induced crisis and discover new opportunities for more sustainable and inclusive economies. In this endeavour, this event seeks to capture what worked and what did not work in the previous programming period 2014-2020 and identify a set of sound recommendations for the next wave of Smart Specialisation Strategies. This workshop offers a unique forum to practitioners, policy-makers and researchers for discussing concrete achievements, good practices, and challenges related to implementing Smart Specialisation approaches in EU regions.
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Smart Stories
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A living lab for the sustainable energy transition ambition of the Algarve Region's S3
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This inspiring Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) implementation example draws on the ‘Culatra 2030 - Sustainable Energy Community’ initiative. Taking place on the island of Culatra in the Algarve Region (Portugal), this demonstration project covers multiple aspects of green transition. It also implements the ambititions of the Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3), using a novel Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) to create a real-life laboratory for green transition, focusing on the specific needs of the island and capitalising on its assets.
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Creating Water Technology solutions through an open innovation ecosystem with pivotal linkage to S3
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WaterCampus Leeuwarden is a dynamic open innovation ecosystem in the field of water technology, based in Friesland, Northern Netherlands. It predates the first Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) in Northern Netherlands by over a decade and has had a strong influence on the development of the S3 approach in the Region. The WaterCampus is fully involved in stakeholder discussions on the draft S3 and Northern-Netherlands ESIF Operational Programme (OP) for the 2021-2027 period. Water technology has wide application right across the priority areas of the new European Green Deal – particularly in relation to climate action, clean energy for all, resource efficient industry for a circular economy, zero pollution, preserving and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity and developing a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system. It facilitates business investment for innovative solutions in precisely these green policy priority areas, which can collectively contribute to the paradigm shift needed for a green and resilient economy.
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Baltic Sea Region – interregional cooperation on circular bio-economy
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Interregional policy learning experiments in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) are demonstrating new ways to untap the potential of the bio- and circular economy, through projects focusing on trans-regional greening supported by regions’ Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3). By linking their own regional priorities to Europe-wide value chains, regional authorities around the BSR are refining S3 governance structures and extending Entrepreneurial Discovery Processes (EDP) for a more systematic cooperation on closing bio-material loops.
Different BSR interregional projects have helped to reinforce cooperation, notably around key bio-circular value chains throughout the macro-region. Building on the strong momentum created and lessons learnt through partnerships during the current period, new perspectives are emerging to grasp the opportunities presented by the incipient Interregional Innovation Investment (I3) mechanism, evolving in line with the European Green Deal.
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Call and Expression of Interests
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Innovation Capacity Building for Higher Education: Pilot Call for Proposals
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European Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are invited to design institution-wide action plans that will improve their entrepreneurial and innovation capacity across all institutional levels and empower them to become regional engines of innovation. Proposals must support the development and implementation of six actions in their institutions that lead to transformation and increased entrepreneurial and innovation capacity. HEIs working in consortia will be expected to demonstrate how they can leverage Smart Specialisation as an impetus to accelerate ecosystem integration and establishment of partnerships. Up to 23 pilot projects will be selected for support over 24 months, starting from July 2021. The call is open until 25 May 2021.
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S3 Publications
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Assessing Smart Specialisation: Monitoring and Evaluation Systems
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The publication aims to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of monitoring and evaluation systems of national and regional authorities implementing Smart Specialisation Strategies. In addition, based on the literature review and on the evidence gathered by a S3 Platform research project, this publication draws some policy lessons with reflections for the 2021-2027 European Union Cohesion policy as regards to monitoring and evaluation.
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Smart Specialisation Process Evaluation: Monitoring and Evaluation Experiences across Europe
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This policy insight provides an overview of the 2020 assessment on how and to what extent Smart Specialisation monitoring and evaluation systems put in place across Europe allow and contribute to a cyclical policy learning process for improved policy design and implementation.
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Rethinking the ‘Entrepreneurial Discovery Process’ in times of physical distancing
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The “Entrepreneurial Discovery Process” is a key element of Smart Specialisation Strategies, referring to stakeholder involvement in policy design to ‘discover’ and identify new or existing priorities for innovation investment, based on regional strengths and emerging/projected market niches/opportunities. This report sets out the lessons learned from this experience with organising and participating in online events to support EDP, and can be divided in before-the-event, during-the-event and after-the-event. Furthermore, an ex post online survey to participants also revealed an overall high satisfaction from the participants and that the EDP online events were welcomed by the large majority of participants.
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Smart Specialisation Strategies and Regional Productivity
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Smart Specialisation is a place-based approach to innovation policy that underpins a significant amount of EU funding. The origins of the concept lie in the transatlantic productivity gap and a concern that previous investments in Research and Innovation (R&I) had failed to deliver commercial benefits. Following more than five years of implementation, this report contributes to the evaluation of the Smart Specialisation approach through quantitative analysis. As part of the Stairway to Excellence project, it is one of the first to assess its impact on regional productivity, based on the case of Portugal. This is done using the country’s main instrument to support corporate Research and Development (R&D) that was launched in 2007 and adapted to accommodate Smart Specialisation in 2014.
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Towards a transformative S3: lessons from Catalonia, Bulgaria and Greece
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There are escalating demands on economies and societies for transformational change, including, though not limited to, sustainability aspects. The European Union and global actors such as the United Nations are giving increasing attention to social and environmental sustainability. The European Green Deal is offering regulatory certainty and unprecedented resources, further supported through the recovery and resilience fund, for a sustainable transition. This paper reflects on how Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3), and in particular the search for actionable policy pathways through the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP), can adapt to more fully support system-level transformation in line with insights from literatures on Sustainability Transitions, Transformative Innovation Policy, and Responsible Research and Innovation.
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POINT review of Industrial Transition of Bulgaria
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This report examines the transition of Bulgaria towards digitalisation with a particular focus on opportunities for the development of industrial capabilities in ICT and mechatronics that, in the spirit of the European Green Deal, jointly tackle economic and societal challenges. Building on stakeholder consultations and extensive research following the Projecting Opportunities for INdustrial Transitions (POINT) methodology of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the review explores some of the policy pathways that Bulgaria might take as it seeks to digitalise its economy and derive multiple associated benefits in terms of pervasive productivity improvements and the creation of knowledge-intensive and therefore well-paid jobs for a broad cross section of the workforce. The report provides timely insights in view of the recovery and resilience fund and the new programming period for S3.
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Horizon 2020 funding: research and innovation for pandemic diseases
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This brief provides an overview of health-related capabilities across the EU27 Member States and the UK in the immediate pre-COVID-19 period, in order to potentially inform future funding and policy priorities in relation to health and pandemics.
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Announcement
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Ukraine's “Global Pilot Programme on STI for SDGs Roadmaps” working meeting
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The initial event aimed to present the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) for Sustainable Development Goals Roadmaps approach, promotes the discussion about possible institutional arrangements, governance, and helps pave the way to identify next development steps of the STI for SDGs Roadmap in Ukraine, by proving the adequate support to the most important needs. The STI for SDGs Roadmap is seen as a key policy-making instrument to move toward comprehensive and effective accomplishment of Sustainable Development Goals in Ukraine. Development of the STI for SDGs Roadmap, based on the successful experience of the implementation of the JRC Smart Specialisation methodology in Ukrainian regions and UNIDO experience of green industrial transformation, requires development of the National Smart Specialisation Strategy for SDGs and identification of the scientific, technological and innovative potential, that could be mobilized to move towards the achievement of SDGSs, in the form of the comprehensive integrated policy set complimenting to the existing strategic framework.
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