S3 Conference 2024 – Rimini, Emilia-Romagna

The Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) Conference 2024 is the flagship event for S3 stakeholders from across regions in EU Member States. It is organised by the DG for Regional Policy of the European Commission and the S3 CoP Secretariat, in partnership with Emilia-Romagna Region and with the support of the Municipality of Rimini.

S3 practitioners, experts, policymakers, and other key stakeholders will come together to engage in this bottom-up event to network, discuss S3 policy and implementation issues and exchange information and good practices. In addition, the S3 Conference will bring together regions recognised as Regional Innovation Valleys under the NEIA flagship action.

For an idea of what last year’s conference was like, watch this video.

The S3 Conference 2024 will be presented around three pillars:  

• Successful S3 design and implementation: fostering place-based innovation, enabling sustainable and resilient economic developmen : challenges, capacities, and policy mix. It will explore how S3 can foster place-based innovation while ensuring resilience and strategic autonomy in the territories and EU as a whole.
• S3 and interregional collaboration: We will learn from many experiences related to interregional collaboration, exploring challenges, opportunities, and mechanisms to align different instruments with regional strategies and capacity building tools. 
• Smart Specialisation and its role for connecting Regional Innovation Valleys in key thematic areas identified in the New European Innovation Agenda, namely: green, digital, food, health, energy, raw materials, and manufacturing. Examples from regions and the newly launched RIV projects supported by I3 and EIE.

While the S3 Conference will be a one-day event (11th of December), there will be a set of side events on the next day (12th of December), for which more information will be shared in due course.  

Participation

The conference is free of charge, but we expect participants and speakers to cover their travel and accommodation expenses.

Call for speakers

Applications to present at the conference are open for all interested regional/national policy makers, S3partnerships, practitioners and researchers.

We invite interested parties to submit their proposals for one of the pillars described above, including speaker and topic details, by filling in the form below by the 30th of June.

For any queries, you are welcome to contact us at contact@s3-cop.eu