Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MAPS-LED (Multidisciplinary Approach to Plan Smart Specialisation Strategies for Local Economic Development)

Teaser

In the last two decades, European regions and cities had to deal with a strong dichotomy being inherent with improving competitiveness and ensuring equal opportunities, amongst social inclusion issues. The globalization context required a structural change in policy design, in...

Summary

In the last two decades, European regions and cities had to deal with a strong dichotomy being inherent with improving competitiveness and ensuring equal opportunities, amongst social inclusion issues. The globalization context required a structural change in policy design, in each level of government and in different forms of governance. From local to global level, the need to be more proactive in order to create conditions of competitive advantages arose, contemporarily with a more integrated approach to face social inequalities. The common space of change lies in building an innovative policy perspective involving all “sectors” of life.
At European level, with the Smart Specialisation theoretical approach the term of innovation has become a catalyst for designing the change in the current cohesion policy. The Smart Specialization Strategies (S3) has been designed in order to capture knowledge and innovation dynamics strictly connected with characteristics of context. It is argued that introducing smart specialisation in regional policy agenda allows at reinforcing territorial knowledge dynamics connected with place-based approach in designing local economic development. European Regions and Cities are experiencing this paradigmatic shift put in place by the EU focusing on S3 as main driver in stimulating a smart, inclusive and sustainable growth through the Innovation Union flagship programme within Europe 2020. The IU flagship placed innovation as an open system in which actors cooperate and interact. The objective is to address R&D and Innovation Policy toward the current challenges of our society such as climate changes, efficient use of resources and energy health and demographic changes. IU is the main reference policy for the development of ‘place-based’ smart specializations, and identifies regions as the main institutions capable to achieve these objectives by creating positive outlook for innovation, education and research. The Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) is the key to identify and select the existing/potentials domains on which a region should concentrate its own efforts. The EDP is an inclusive and interactive bottom-up approach, which thanks to the engagement of different actors, contributes in discovering and producing information for potentials new activities and potentials opportunities facilitating policy makers in finding appropriate strategies. EDP “pursues the integration of entrepreneurial knowledge” which is fragmented and distributed, through the building of partnerships and connections, favouring the entrepreneurial knowledge concentration.
The MAPS-LED project focuses on the influence of the context on resource utilization behaviour with respect the innovation flow. Case studies in US allowed identifying the link between city planning initiatives and S3 by introducing the innovation-driven urban regeneration as an important phase of the EDP.

Work performed

The general objective of the MAPS-LED project is to examine how S3 can be implemented by incorporating a place-based dimension. The main objectives are: 1) to identify and examine S3 in terms of spatial, social and environmental factors; 2) to take into account local needs and opportunities driving regional policy interventions not only to emphasize “Key Enable Technologies”, but also to empower local innovation process – tacit knowledge, embedded social networks, innovative milieu. The originality and innovation in the methodological approach stems from the spatial led approach to the analysis of US clusters, allowing to draw evidence for a S3 place-based theory testing pilot S3 areas in European regional contexts.
The MAPS-LED project, starting from a place-based framework, includes three important drivers: Cluster policy and cluster-based analysis, Knowledge based urban development and urban regeneration mechanisms, Innovative milieu in terms of the local value chains based on the urban-rural linkages.
The research activities led to emphasize the role of the city in spurring the innovation process. The MAPS-LED project has delivered a methodology to spatialize economic clusters at city level in Boston and San Diego, as expression of how innovation is experimented in the modern economy and how the “place” works.
At the end of the project, two important drivers for S3 implementation have been disclosed. The former is connected with Place-Based Innovation Ecosystems at city level, aimed at studying the functioning of urban innovation ecosystems and the role of individual key players to orchestrate quadruple helix (i.e. Government, University, Enterprise and Society) in order to understand their specific contribution to the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process.
The latter aimed at investigating the case of local industries in the San Diego through a Dynamic SWOT analysis in order to understand how local clusters can respond with respect to the potential opportunities and threats related to S3 implementation.

Final results

The contribution of MAPS-LED project in the current debate concerns the explanation of how territorial strategies can be part of “regional innovation strategies for S3”.
The project argues that the inclusion of the spatial dimension in the entrepreneurial discovery process is an important factor to diffuse the clustering phase because allows at highlighting: 1) Economic agglomerations where innovation may occur, 2) The concentration of resources, critical mass (physical, social, financial) for knowledge convergence.
The expected impact lies in enhancing knowledge sharing process in building a smart platform (open innovation model) supporting knowledge dynamics for the creation of cluster initiatives and cluster organisations through urban regeneration mechanisms. Platform called my.STARTup explores the Living Lab as a tool finalized to contextualize an integrated approach to reinforce the role of the city in the creation of knowledge dynamics.
The direction of new explorations comes from a conceptual model based on an evolutionary perspective in recognizing that the dynamic process, thanks to innovation and knowledge, defines different equilibrium paths that may be rather explained by the territorial response. The ongoing debate over cohesion policy for post 2020 recalls for a more awareness of the regions’ role in the European integration process towards a tangible effect on citizens\' quality of life in harnessing globalization and industrial change, embracing innovation and digitalization, managing migration in the long run and fighting climate change. The inclination to upgrade financial exposures of regions, towards making of suitable context conditions, is seen as a need empowering them to handle the difficulties presented by globalization. It is widely recognized that, so far, the economic resources plowed into showed little results in catch up the change towards territorial cohesion. It is advocated a more harmonization in policy design process. Even though, for the post 2020 scenario, the coordination and harmonization process is sharpened among the ESI Funds and other EU instruments, these constitute only small fraction of interregional transfers, and in their entirety as an impact on economic growth and development remain one of the many variables. Further suggestions lay towards a kind of harmonisation process in supporting the discovery of regional potentials under both a spatial and a life cycle lens in boosting S3-harmonised policies.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.cluds-7fp.unirc.it/.