Manuel Palazuelos Martinez, Team leader of the Smart Specialisation Platform within the Joint Research Centre, Unit B7

Taking stock of the implementation of Smart Specialisation: Evidence and Lessons Learned

1. Governance: The results show great advances in governance, and Smart Specialisation has strengthened the networks of actors, making also the decision-making process more inclusive. The institutional changes promoted by Smart Specialisation have contributed to more profound positive changes that only those concerning the actual governance of the process. However, progress is still necessary on both horizontal and vertical coordination.
    
2. The Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP): The EDP has been a very successful way to organize the Smart Specialisation process in general. However, how the EDPs should be stimulated and organised, remains highly context-dependent, and there seem to be a significant heterogeneity across EDPs and within EDPs themselves. We suggest focusing on EDP interventions that:
   a) design/implement mechanisms around the specificities of the regional context; b) consider using digital forms of engagement; and c) increase the use of communication and dissemination tools.
    
3. Monitoring and Evaluation Systems: we could draw a number of conclusions and recommendations: 
   a) the reality or the practice of policy monitoring and evaluation continues to lag behind, (in other words, probably we have not yet given the importance that it deserves to this), which limits the policy learnings that we can extract from it; b) It is necessary to identify a dedicated team responsible for Smart Specialisation monitoring and evaluation within the public administration; and c) it is important to collect data relating to the behaviour of innovation actors, even those not represented in regional calls, which can be facilitated using also alternative techniques: big data, web semantics.
    
4. Policy Implementation Measures: We find 3 aspects that can be improved: a) Smart Specialisation Strategies in general have used a relatively limited portfolio of traditional, more supply-side instruments, so there is clearly more scope to introduce further diversity and innovation in this area. b) Little selectivity in terms of both priorities and type of interventions. So there is limited evidence of the implementation of a truly selective intervention logic aimed to support in a dedicated way different investment priorities. c) limited support to the formation and strengthening of stakeholder communities.