ABSTRACT
Triggered by the work of the Knowledge for Growth Expert Group, smart specialisation was developed as an academic concept in the mid- to late-2000s. As McCann and Ortega-Argiles and Foray have vividly described, the months following the delivery of the Knowledge for Growth report witnessed an energetic embracing of the smart specialisation concept by the European Commission's Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy. This chapter pursues to confirm whether there is indeed a persistent policy failure by evaluating whether final RIS3 strategies still lack focus in terms of the number of priorities. It then analyses in which type of European regions policymakers see positive cost-benefit assessments of bottom-up RIS3 processes and what motivates this appraisal. The chapter focuses on the new empirical basis of two successive questionnaire-based online surveys with policymakers conducted in the three-month period from July to September 2013 and the four-month period from May to August 2014.
