Source of Information and Geographical Coverage:
In order to support European regions and countries in developing RIS3s the European Commission has set up the Smart Specialisation Platform (S3P). The S3P has developed a number of online tools that facilitate gathering the innovation related information across Europe. The Eye@RIS3 tool offers critical information to support European territories in prioritising investments and collaborating. Its underlying database contains the smart specialisation priorities as indicated by EU Member States and regional administrations as well as the research and innovation priorities of several non-EU countries and regions. Eye@RIS3 is an online database to help strategy development and implementation.
Data comes from a number of sources, such as from the national and regional public managers as well as from European Commission staff encoding the data based on the approved RIS3 documents. In the case of non-EU countries, existing national and regional innovation strategies are the source. In very few cases the data on envisaged priorities are based on S3P RIS3 Peer Review Workshops and expert reports. The ultimate aim of this open tool is that the regional/national authorities regularly update their RIS3 priorities in this tool accordingly with their respective on-going stakeholder involvement processes (Entrepreneurial Discovery Processes).
It is important to note that the encoded information for the non-EU countries are much more general as they have not developed as yet their RIS3 strategies, therefore the encoded information for these entities are much more general and may serve only for providing a general outlook into their R&I priorities.
Structure:
The S3/R&I priorities in Europe are defined in the tool through the following three categories:
1) "Economic Domains" categories are based on the Eurostat's NACE2 sectoral codes and OECD categories;
2) "Scientific Domains" categories are based on the Nomenclature for the Analysis and Comparison of Scientific Programmes and Budgets (NABS 2007); and
3) "EU Policy Objectives" category is composed of ten EU-wide policy areas - each with a set of various sub-categories - corresponding to the so called 'Societal Grand Challenges' identified in Horizon2020 and the headline policies in the Innovation Union Flagship Initiative, including Creative and Cultural Industries, KETs, Social Innovation and the Digital Agenda.
The three categories aim to provide an overview of the R&I activities activities, in which combined investments of the EU, national, regional public and private resources are likely to stimulate knowledge-driven growth. The tool also combines and aligns the identified regional/national edonomic and R&I capabilities with the EU wide policy objectives.