Smart Specialisation Newsletter

The JRC has just launched the new release of the Territorial Economic Data viewer (TEDv), a unique data visualization tool providing data on European R&I funding in a comprehensive framework. The platform is intended for policy-makers and researchers making available a wealth of information for monitoring and analysis purposes. A key feature of TEDv is that it allows users to compare different funding sources across multiple geographical areas, and relate them to territorial statistical information such as research and development expenditure. For the first time, these data usually scattered across various sources can be handily searched for and retrieved from a single platform.

The conference “Partnerships for Regional Innovation: From Pilot to Practice” held on 30-31 May brought together participants in the Partnerships for Regional Innovation (PRI) Pilot and beyond to discuss further joint work, exchange good practices, co-shape the revised PRI Playbook and engage with interested stakeholders on the green and digital transitions. The conference was organised in the framework of the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the EU, together with the European Commission, the European Committee of the Regions and the Dalarna Region together with the regions of Northern and Eastern Central Sweden and Vinnova, the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth and MidSweden. The event was an opportunity to hand over the PRI approach from the Swedish Presidency to the forthcoming Spanish Semester. The participation of Teresa Riesgo, General Secretary for Innovation of Spain, confirmed the alignment of PRI with the next term’s priorities.

The JRC and PRI pilot participants from Extremadura, Dalarna, Gabrovo, Navarra, the Northern Netherlands and Podkarpackie joined efforts with the regional government of the Azores in the workshop "PRI Learning Journey: Co-creating (inter)regional missions" at the Portuguese S3Summit in Ponte Delgada. The workshop provided an opportunity to learn about mission theory (Matthijs Janssen, Utrecht University) and policy practice (Tatiana Fernandez, Catalonia) and to explore three possible mission topics for the region of the Azores: self-sustaining agriculture, balancing biodiversity with its uses and sustainable and decarbonised mobility. The workshop represented a first attempt by the PRI community to support the initiation of local missions in one of its members. PRI pilot regions obtained useful experience on how to facilitate the process of mission development, demonstrating that co-creation workshops can be a powerful tool for mutual learning.

Despite mounting interest in transformative innovation policies, there are only few studies that provide insights with regards to their implementation. The present study asks which policy design features make a policy transformative and what capacities public administration and the broader governance system need in order to provide such transformative policies.

This paper focuses on TIP's monitoring and evaluation (M&E), and provides some recommendations for how to set up M&E, contrasting traditional M&E with modern M&E, and highlighting the need for real-time data. In sum, we state that M&E needs improving, and we suggest how this might be done. Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) has an important role in the sudden transition that our economies require to face up to today's grand challenges (climate change, sustainable development goals).

The JRC-TEDAM working paper explores avenues for cross-fertilisation between the mission oriented approach and cohesion policy. On the one hand, missions can help restore a strong sense of identity into cohesion policy and strengthen its impact through more directionality. On the other hand, cohesion policy could contribute to infusing a more pronounced place-based dimension into the missions approach. The paper looks at these aspects with an eye to discussions on the future of place-based policies.