The Smart Specialisation approach requires looking beyond the national/regional administrative boundaries. In other words, a country/region should be able to identify its 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 other regions.
The potential benefit of this integration is the main rationale of the Thematic Smart Specialisation Platforms, which aim to facilitate and reinforce transnational and interregional cooperation across the EU by promoting complementarity of regional funding for innovation and supporting the bottom-up collaboration between businesses and researchers along value chains across the EU.
The Thematic Smart Specialisation Platforms encourage regions and their innovation actors to build strategic Thematic S3 partnerships, in order to exploit complementary strengths, build synergies with other regional, national and EU networks and initiatives, and enhance the development of and investments in EU value chains.
Thematic S3 partnerships are based on a bottom-up approach which means that they are initiated, developed, and led by the regions themselves, with an active involvement of all relevant Quadruple Helix partners, including business organisations, research institutions, academia, and the civil society.
Partnerships are encouraged to follow a methodology in line with a specific work-flow that takes them through a number of steps. This work-flow follows an iterative and non-linear process which can be understood as a dynamic flow of activities that result in living documents and outcomes that require continuous monitoring and review.
This approach is an adaptation of the 4-step approach defined by the Vanguard Initiative: Learn, Connect, Demonstrate and Commercialise. In addition to these phases, the model of the Thematic Smart Specialisation Platforms adds a step of Upscaling the results in terms of investments.
The potential benefit of this integration is the main rationale of the Thematic Smart Specialisation Platforms, which aim to facilitate and reinforce transnational and interregional cooperation across the EU by promoting complementarity of regional funding for innovation and supporting the bottom-up collaboration between businesses and researchers along value chains across the EU.
The Thematic Smart Specialisation Platforms encourage regions and their innovation actors to build strategic Thematic S3 partnerships, in order to exploit complementary strengths, build synergies with other regional, national and EU networks and initiatives, and enhance the development of and investments in EU value chains.
Thematic S3 partnerships are based on a bottom-up approach which means that they are initiated, developed, and led by the regions themselves, with an active involvement of all relevant Quadruple Helix partners, including business organisations, research institutions, academia, and the civil society.
Partnerships are encouraged to follow a methodology in line with a specific work-flow that takes them through a number of steps. This work-flow follows an iterative and non-linear process which can be understood as a dynamic flow of activities that result in living documents and outcomes that require continuous monitoring and review.
This approach is an adaptation of the 4-step approach defined by the Vanguard Initiative: Learn, Connect, Demonstrate and Commercialise. In addition to these phases, the model of the Thematic Smart Specialisation Platforms adds a step of Upscaling the results in terms of investments.