The Role of the Smart Specialisation Agenda in a Reformed EU Cohesion Policy

TThe paper sets out to explore the regional entrepreneurship-promotion and innovation- promotion agenda which is a central component of the place-based reforms to EU Cohesion Policy. In particular, the paper examines the logic which underpins the smart specialisation concept, a concept which provides a powerful policy-prioritisation logic to this agenda. However, in order to understand why smart specialisation is so important in the Cohesion Policy reform process, it is also necessary to understand the context in which the concept originally emerged, and then to identify how the concept is translated to the regional setting. We illustrate the types of issues arising by means of several examples of policy initiatives.

Il paper si prefigge di esplorare la strategia di sviluppo dell’imprenditorialità e dell’innovazione che è un aspetto fondamentale delle nuove riforme place-based della politica di coesione dell’Unione Europea. In particolare, il lavoro esamina la logica che supporta il concetto di specializzazione intelligente, un concetto molto utile in quanto permette di chiarire le priorità di questa strategia. Tuttavia, per comprendere come la specializzazione intelligente sia così importante nel processo di riforma della politica di coesione, è necessario identificare il contesto nel quale il concetto è stato per la prima volta formulato e come sia stato tradotto in ambito regionale. Nel lavoro, questi obiettivi sono raggiunti anche attraverso l’illustrazione di molti esempi di iniziative di politiche.

Parole chiave:Regioni, politiche, Europa, innovazione, crescita. Classificazione

Jel codes:L52, O43, R11, R58.

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Philip McCann, Ortega Ortega-Argilés, The Role of the Smart Specialisation Agenda in a Reformed EU Cohesion Policy in "SCIENZE REGIONALI " 1/2014, pp 15-32, DOI: 10.3280/SCRE2014-001002