The European Commission adopted legislative proposals for cohesion policy for 2014-2020 in October 2011. This factsheet is one in a series highlighting key elements of the future approach.

One of the most basic conditions required for drawing lessons from regional benchmarking is to compare homogeneous regions and learn from equivalents. This condition is not met when regions for comparison are chosen based on their high performance, overlooking their regional context or...

This note studies the mechanisms through which regional economies diversify over time and formulates suggestions on how policy can influence such process. In particular, two closely related concepts will be defined, that is, technological relatedness and related variety. Regional diversification...

Smart specialisation is an innovative policy concept which emphasizes the principle of prioritisation in a vertical logic (to favour some technologies, fields, population of firms) and defines a method to identify such desirable areas for innovation policy intervention. Its rationale involves...

Smart Specialisation (S3) is a new framework for research and innovation strategies which together with other instruments, such as Horizon 2020 is designed to pull Europe out of its current economic problems. Successful RIS3 strategies are improving and sometimes changing conditions promoting...

In the design and implementation of policy, Paul Romer (2000) proposed a useful distinction between goals and programmes.Goals should be rather conservative (i.e. easy to accept). They should be objectives that are neither risky nor radical and for which there is a broad base of intellectual and...

The KETs preliminary report consists of information on KETs and Smart specialisation that the S3 Platform has developed and diffused in different forms, as well as relevant information that has been identified by participation in different kinds of events. The first part of the report focuses...

Universities have a potentially pivotal role to play in the social and economic development of their regions. They are a critical ‘asset’ of the region; even more so in less favoured regions where the private sector may be weak or relatively small, and has low levels of research and...

The Smart Specialisation (S3) Platform was established by the European Commission in 2011 to help European regions to define their R&I strategies based on the principle of smart specialisation. This principle suggests that each region can identify its strongest assets and R&I potential so that...

Research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3) are trying to introduce a new vision of innovation policy in European regions. However, the success of RIS3 policy measures is closely dependent on the capacity of regional government institutions to act as coordinators or...