Pilot methodology

Smart Specialisation (S3) has been designed as a methodology for knowledge-based economic development agenda. However, the accumulated experience of EU Member States and countries worldwide adopting this approach shows that the priorities and projects chosen in the participative bottom-up processes contribute to a lot of the SDGs and their targets. Having this in mind, the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission joined forces with the United Nation's Inter-Agency Task Team on Science, Technology and Innovation Roadmaps for Sustainable Development Goals and decided to adapt S3 to better contribute to SDGs. The pilot methodology is presently tried in Serbia, one of 5 countries taking part in the Global Pilot Programme for STI Roadmaps for SDGs. See below for main steps and achievements so far.

Serbia worked with Joint Research Centre on the development of Smart Specialisation Strategy  adopted by the Government in February 2020. The interlinked priority domains already contribute to SDGs 2, 7, 8 and 9. The identification of these SDGs will be further supported by the SDG mapping shown in the next section.

See more information in the related website.

Source: Smart Specialisation Strategy of the Republic of Serbia

Source: SIRIS Academic for European Commission, Joint Research Centre

SDG mapping starts with the analysis of the SDGs and their targets prioritised in the national policy assessments. It is later followed by the overview of the statistical indicators, where Serbia as a pilot country is compared to the EU 27.

See more information here:

• Policy Framework for SDGs in Serbia: Overview of priority SDGs (PDF file).
• Statistical assessment of main challenges resulting from SDGs in Serbia (PDF file)

Source: SIRIS Academic for European Commission, Joint Research Centre

See more information here:

• Serbian STI for SDGs networks: Main Serbian actors and international partners collaborating in SDG-oriented STI activities (PDF file).

The analysis of STI records covered scientific publications, patents, EU-funded research and innovation projects and STI activities financed by Serbian Innovation Fund.

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Source: SIRIS Academic for European Commission, Joint Research Centre

See more information here:

• Main topics of STI activities (PPT presentation | PDF file).

See more information here:

• Science, Technology and Innovation Potential for SDGs in Serbia Summary of the mapping results by Goal (PDF file).

The Sustainable Development Goals are a cohesive agenda. Goals and targets are interrelated, and development pathways addressing a goal can have positive, as well as negative, consequences on other goals. This section presents an analysis of the overlap between the STI activities, results and capacities in the different goals.

Source: SIRIS Academic for European Commission, Joint Research Centre

See more information here:

• SDG Interlinkages in STI outputs (PDF file).

See more information here:

• Potential impact of Smart Specialisation on SDGs (PDF File).