In order to facilitate strategic interregional collaborations and strong industry involvement, and to create a project pipeline for smart specialisation investments across Europe, the European Commission started to offer support to regional authorities, clusters and industry stakeholders through an integrated approach to smart specialisation, clusters and industrial modernisation.

The Commission announces which interregional partnerships will receive tailored support under a new EU-funded pilot action for innovative projects.

As a key first step in a HESS case study, focussed on strengthening the involvement of universities in the definition of local development policies, JRC visited on the municipalities of Ruse and Gabrovo on 15 November. The meetings prepared the ground for a mapping exercise of the education system - including both bottlenecks and opportunities – that will support the drafting of a comprehensive action plan to promote their active engagement in smart specialisation activities. The specificities of the local context require better adaptation of the HESS working approaches to local needs, particularly because secondary level education institutions are involved in the project.

The production volume of the European Photonics industry accounted for EUR 69.2 billion in 2015, corresponding to a global market share of 15.5%2. Since 2011 the production volume of the European Photonics industry has grown from EUR 65.6 billion to EUR 69.2 billion.

The latest region to register is the Ruse Province (BG).

DG GROW has just published 2 separate calls for expressions of interest...

The latest region to register is North Rhine-Westphalia (DE).

Webinars organised this month on Digital Transformation in Olympic Games, AI and Robotics for the Digital Age, HPC and Social Innovation and Development of Entrepreneurs

Within the frame of the second edition of the GROW your REGIOn conference that was held in Valencia, Spain, on 8-9 November 2017, the second Steering Committee meeting of the Smart Specialisation Platform of Industrial Modernisation took place.

The S3 Platform has been recognised as "best practice" by the highly competitive and renowned European Public Sector Awards (EPSA), under the theme "An Innovative Public Sector in 2017: New solutions to complex challenges". The S3 Platform was selected among 150 applications received from local, regional and national, and Europe-wide projects of public sector organisations.