ABSTRACT
The notion of territorial strategy is currently undergoing a boom in popularity, alongside the re-emergence of debates around industrial policy (Rodrik, 2004; Valdaliso and Wilson, 2015; Wade, 2012; Warwick, 2013). New industrial policies recognise that it is important for territories to have concrete strategies to guide their economic development, which means making choices around which economic activities to support. Where they break from old industrial policies is in emphasising that making those choices is not the job of government alone, but must build new forms of private-public interaction. In Europe these debates have taken shape around the concept of smart specialisation strategies (Foray and Van Ark, 2008; Foray, 2013, 2014; McCann and Ortega-Argilés, 2015, 2016), which have been interpreted largely at regional level following the European Commission’s push for all regions to design and implement ‘research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation’ (RIS3) (European Commission, 2011, 2012, 2014; McCann, 2015).
