External dimensions of smart specialisation: Opportunities and challenges for trans-regional and transnational collaboration in the EU-13

Slavo Radosevic and Katerina Ciampi Stancova ()

No JRC96030, JRC Research Reports from Joint Research Centre

Abstract: The paper explores the issues of trans-regional and transnational collaboration in the context of smart specialisation in regions with the less developed research and development and innovation (R&D&I) systems, identified as the 13 countries (EU-13) that joined the European Union (EU) after 2004. The paper proposes a systematic methodological approach to trans-regional and transnational cooperation and discusses how this can be utilized to build innovation capacities and enhance innovation potential in selected regions. Specifically, paper addresses following questions: what is conceptual approach to trans-regional cooperation within the context of Smart Specialisation? What is the role of regional governments/national authorities? How regional authorities can deal with analysis of trans-regional opportunities, potential competitors and collaborators? Based on the analysis, what steps can policy-makers take to improve trans-regional cooperation? Our discussion is grounded in the key stylized facts related to EU-13 R&D&I activities, and the complex link between innovation and internationalization. Innovation systems in the EU-13 are fragmented and based on largely public R&D systems and innovation systems based on predominantly production oriented foreign direct investment (FDI). This structural weakness calls for stronger support for innovation oriented activities and for the integration of global value chains (GVCs) and FDI into local innovation systems. We distinguish and discuss the main obstacles to the internationalization of smart specialisation and discuss ways to overcome them. We highlight the policy action areas related to providing support for technology upgrading in relation to the internationalization of smart specialisation. The Paper concludes by offering a discussion of policies to improve trans-regional cooperation in less developed R&I systems in short and long term.

Keywords: Inter-regional collaboration; smart specialisation; innovation policy; transnational collaboration; (global) value chains; regional development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eur, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-sbm and nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc96030

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