ABSTRACT
Smart specialisation strategies (S3) work by prioritising regional development spending on each region’s distinct competitive advantages vis-a-vis other regions, thus enabling regions to transition into more dynamic and higher value-added sectors. The European Commission’s S3 guidance indicates that regions should develop both a formal S3 document – setting out an analysis of the region’s potential smart specialisations and the expected policy support for them – and actions to engage stakeholders. A healthy regional entrepreneurship ecosystem is important to enable scale-ups, SMEs innovation and the emergence of innovative start-up, which play a critical role in helping regions develop towards more growth oriented and higher productivity activities. A region’s choice of smart specialisation priorities should be focused on a limited number of specific emerging activities with local potential for innovation, productivity growth and entrepreneurship.
