Peer Review Workshop in Dublin

  • 03 Jul 2014 to 04 Jul 2014
  • Farmleigh Estate in Dublin (Ireland)

Five countries presented their current work on RIS3: Bulgaria, Ireland, Romania, Poland and Slovakia. The rest of workshop participants acted as 'critical friends' and discussed the strategies of the countries under review. All five countries had a number of shared priorities and common questions in their RIS3 and discussed these in detail during the peer review sessions.

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Agenda and Presentations

During this Peer Review Workshop 'Moving Forward and Looking Outward', which was co-organised by the S3 Platform and the Irish Authorities (Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation), five countries presented their current work on RIS3: Bulgaria, Ireland, Romania, Poland and Slovakia. The rest of workshop participants acted as 'critical friends' and discussed the strategies of the countries under review. All five countries had a number of shared priorities and common questions in their RIS3 and discussed these in detail during the peer review sessions. 

Event agenda

The five countries under review prepared a number of documents before the workshop.

Bulgaria - Presentation and background document 
Ireland - Presentation and background document 
Poland - Presentation and background document 
Romania - Presentation and background document 
Slovakia - Presentation and background document 

Building  on the experience gained during previous peer-review workshops organised by the S3 Platform over the last three years, a purposely developed S3 Peer Review methodology was employed as an instrument to support EU regions and Member States in the development of their RIS3 (Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation).

Presentations are listed in the order they were delivered.

Day 01 Day 02
Dominique Foray     
Louis Brennan     
Brendan Cannon     
Emanuela Todeva     
Ruslan Rakhmatullin
Katja Reppel     
Age Mariussen     
Jiri Blazek     
Jean Severijns     
Colm McColgan

 

Invited Experts

Dr. Jiří Blažek is Associate Professor at Charles University in Prague. His main research interests are innovation systems, analysis of regional impacts of sectoral policies and evaluation of the EU cohesion policy impacts. He has over 20 years of expertise in the area of regional development and policy. He has provided expert services to the CZ Ministry for Regional Development in relation to Partnership Agreement and to CZ Ministry of Education on to as well as to several regional development bodies on Smart Specialisation strategy.


Dr. Louis Brennan is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and a Professor within the Trinity School of Business. He was previously Director of the Institute for International Integration Studies at Trinity College. Dr Brennan was educated in Ireland, France, the UK and the USA. He has served as a faculty member and researcher in Engineering and Business schools in the USA, Europe and Asia. His research interests relate to Global and Operations Strategy, Global Supply Chain Management and International Business.

Brendan Cannon worked for nearly a decade with multinational companies in Japan, UK and USA. Brendan is currently the Corporate Affairs Director at Intel Ireland with responsibility for driving Intel Ireland's policy, communications, education and community agendas. Brendan is Intel's representative on the Sherpa Group tasked by the European Commission to advise on a policy framework to protect and advance Europe's Key Enabling Technologies.

Dr. Dominique Foray is Full Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and holds the Chair of Economics and Management of Innovation (CEMI). He is a member of the National Research Council (Switzerland) and of the Expert Commission for Research and Innovation of Germany which is directly advising the German Chancellor. From 2008 to 2011, he served as chairman of the expert group Knowledge for Growth. This is during his service as member of this Group that he developed the concept of smart specialisation.

Dr. Declan Jordan is a Lecturer in Economics in University College Cork, Ireland. His research interests include innovation, regional development and competitiveness, business performance and strategy and innovation and enterprise policy, areas in which he has published widely. He also has substantial management and corporate experience.


Dr. Jerzy Langer is a President of the Wroclaw Research Centre EIT+, the largest new research and innovation infrastructure in Poland. He was a Deputy Minister of Science and the key advisor to the President of Polish Academy of Sciences. Served major science advisory bodies to the EC, member of the HL S3 Platform mirror group (DG Regio). Since creation of the ERC, he heads the AdG panel in condensed matter; co-authored several key European policy documents related to the ERA, ERC, FET and regional innovation policy.
 

Åge Mariussen is Botnia-Atlantica Institute leader at the University of Vaasa, Finland and Senior Researcher at the Nordland Research Institute, University of Nordland, Norway. His expertise is the area of regional development, industrial restructuring, social cohesion and transnational learning. The Botnia-Atlantica Institute is a transnational institute set up to promote development in the Botnia Atlantica Region.

Colm McColgan is General Manager of ERNACT and has been designing and delivering innovative international ICT and broadband projects in the various EU innovation programmes for almost 20 years. Previous to this he held various information systems development positions in the private sector, including Coca Cola and information Systems Manager with Rauma Repola (Finland).
 

Dr. Slavo Radosevic is Professor of Industry and Innovation Studies at the University College London and director of UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. His main research interests are in S&T and innovation policy in central and Eastern Europe. He has been involved in smart specialisation activities for Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia.

Dr. Jean Severijns works for the Regional Government of the province of Limburg (NL) where he deals with cross-border activities and internationalisation in general and with regional innovation policy in particular. Jean has over 25 years of experience in policy-making, consultancy and matching business and governmental interests on strategic, tactical and operational level. He represents the Province of Limburg both within the S3 Platform Mirror Group as well as the S3 Task Force for the Southern part of the Netherlands.

Dr. Emanuela Todeva, Director of Research Centre for Business Clusters, Networks and Economic Development, University of Surrey, UK – has published and investigated global business networks, clusters and supply chains in the context of Barbados, China, UK, Bulgaria and global value chains of the bio-medical and health sector, telecommunications, global information  sector, and petrochemical industry.

 

References

Practical Information

When
03 Jul 2014 to 04 Jul 2014
Where
Farmleigh Estate in Dublin (Ireland)
Registration Information
Registration is closed.

Description

RIS3 and Outward Looking Dimension
The first plenary session on the 03 July focused on global value chains and their analysis. An assessment of existing national/regional assets implies looking 'inside' the country/region; however, this might be insufficient for a smart specialisation strategy. A major novelty of the smart specialisation approach is that each country/region has to make its strategic decisions by taking into account their position relative to other regions of Europe. Such decision making implies that the RIS3 approach requires looking beyond the national/regional administrative boundaries. In other words, a country/region should be able to identify their competitive advantages through systematic comparisons with other countries/regions, mapping their national and the international context in search of examples to learn from, or to mark a difference with, and performing effective benchmarking. Moreover, each country/region should be able to identify relevant linkages and flows of goods, services and knowledge revealing possible patterns of integration with partner regions. This is particularly important in the case of less developed countries/regions that would often require to source know-how and technology from elsewhere. The position of businesses within global value chains in this respect is a crucial element to be considered.

This type of analysis is particularly important as the concept of smart specialisation warns against 'blind' duplication of investments in other European regions. Any such blind duplication of efforts could lead to excessive fragmentation, loss of synergy potential, and ultimately could hamper the reach of the critical mass required for success. On the contrary, interregional collaboration should be pursued whenever similarities or complementarities with other regions are detected.

Venue

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