Smart Specialisation Newsletter

After 3 years of leading the unit for Digital Economy – JRC.T.1, Carlos TORRECILLA SALINAS takes over the position of Head of Unit of JRC.B.7 – Innovation Policies and Economic Impact in Seville. Carlos holds a PhD in Informatics from the University of Seville. He has a broad experience in the field of Information and Communication Technologies in both the private and public sector.

As part of the European Week of Regions and Cities 2023, this session aimed to highlight the importance of targeted support for Smart Specialisation in the EU Enlargement countries and to discuss the main needs for the future. Speakers presented key results from the countries' experiences in the design and implementation process of Smart Specialisation in two EU candidate countries based on the methodological guidance for applying the S3 approach in the EU Enlargement and Neighbourhood regions.

The JRC.B.7-REMO organised two sessions on policy monitoring and evaluation. The session “Data and methods for policy monitoring: a learning lab for practitioners” focused on utilizing territorial data for regional policy-making, with discussions on local policy monitoring challenges and practical training using the data visualisation tool developed by the JRC: Territorial Economic Data viewer (TEDv). The second session “Lessons learned to support the future design of cohesion policy”, centered on leveraging insights from past cohesion policy evaluations to shape its future design. On both JRC sessions, there was an interesting debate with participants on the need for good quality data for policy monitoring and evaluation.

For this JRC session around 40 participants were enrolled. Presentations were made by JRC (Karel Haegeman), EIT Climate KIC and the JRC – EIT Working Group (Thomas Koetz), Basque Environmental Agency (Ander Elgorriaga) and STRITIH (Nataša Beltran). The key role of governance, innovation, social aspects and transformative innovation for climate resilience were recognised by the speakers and the audience.

At the EWRC 2023, the JRC also took part to the participatory lab on “Green Competences for all – preparing learners for the green transition". The panel, moderated by the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sports and Culture, included the engagement of the European Training Foundation, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the EU Education for Climate Coalition and GreenComp, the European sustainability competence framework.

The PRI’s contribution to the Policy Lab organised by SECGEN, raised noticeable interest, gathering a good number of questions and several regions willing to get in contact with PRI and looking forward to exploring ways of involvement. This policy lab session explored how EU regions and cities are championing strategic foresight tools to explore, anticipate, and shape future trends, and how the EU can support them in this endeavour.

The report provides guidance on applying a mission-oriented approach to smart specialisation strategies (S3) to address societal challenges and achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs). It was prepared in close cooperation with policy makers from the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade responsible for the Czech national S3 strategy. The publication is aimed at policymakers in Europe and beyond who are responsible for designing and implementing innovation policies that address sustainability challenges and goals such as the SDGs.