Strengthening Innovation in Europe's regions

The Communication, and its accompanying Staff Working Document, take the smart specialisation approach one step further and tackle the following main challenges:

• Boosting the innovation and competitiveness potential of European regions, as a basis for a sustainable growth model;
• Increasing interregional cooperation, which is a key element in globalised economies;
• Strengthening the focus on less developed and industrial transition regions;
• Improving and building on joint work across EU policies and programmes supporting innovation.

In this context, a range of focused pilot actions are put forward, which will facilitate developing experience and a broader way of looking at the economic development and growth of European regions. The ultimate goal is to enable all Europe's regions to build on smart specialisation to fully unlock their potential for technological change, digitisation decarbonisation and industrial modernisation.