1. Peer eXchange & Learning
Entrepreneurial Discovery Process
for Smart Specialisation Strategies (EDP)
Estonia/Tallinn
Aarhus, 19 March 2018 [Jaanus Müür, Dr. Erkki Karo]

2. Overview of RIS3 in E-stonia and Tallinn
Main regional characteristics
- One of the least-populous member states of the EU (1.3M) with low population density (29/km2) and large regional differences (Tallinn people, over half of the GDP vs rest of EST)
Governance
RIS3 is governed from the national level, the principles of smart spec. are embedded into two national strategies.
The Ministry of Education and Research (HTM) is responsible for the implementation of Estonian Research and Development and Innovation Strategy The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications (MKM) is responsible for the implementation of Estonian Entrepreneurship Growth Strategy → Structural funds are linked with these two strategies.
Tallinn City has developed its own strategy Tallinn Enterprise and Innovation strategy → Not linked with structural funds, funded by city budget. The city has limited options to support EDP.
In order to make the discussion at the workshop as efficient and useful as possible, it is important to move out of the ‘classical’ presenting mood and head towards a more concrete approach to issues that need to be faced on the ground, while establishing and implementing your strategy. For this reason it is important to define a focus of your presentation, which would act as a ‘red thread’ in your presentation.
Please remember that the more linked to your presentation the questions are, the more relevant feedback you might get. By presenting the questions up front, you allow your peer critical friends to keep them in mind while you give your presentation. The questions should be repeated at the end of the presentation. Questions of a very general character can be made relevant for you specific region only if you give related information in your presentation.

3. Overview of RIS3 in E-stonia and Tallinn
National level
Tallinn City
National priorities more or less the same since the early 2000’s
ICT
Application of ICT in other sectors
Health technology and service
Biotechnology
E-health
Resource enhancement
Industry involved in enhancement of materials
Knowledge-based construction
Food that supports health
Chemical industry (more efficient use of oil shale)
Service industry: Creative industry, Tourism, Transport and logistics, Healthcare services, Financial services
Future technologies: Health technologies, Mechatronics, Environmental technologies
ICT horizontally
In order to make the discussion at the workshop as efficient and useful as possible, it is important to move out of the ‘classical’ presenting mood and head towards a more concrete approach to issues that need to be faced on the ground, while establishing and implementing your strategy. For this reason it is important to define a focus of your presentation, which would act as a ‘red thread’ in your presentation.
Please remember that the more linked to your presentation the questions are, the more relevant feedback you might get. By presenting the questions up front, you allow your peer critical friends to keep them in mind while you give your presentation. The questions should be repeated at the end of the presentation. Questions of a very general character can be made relevant for you specific region only if you give related information in your presentation.

4. EDP for the RIS3 design – challenges in E-stonia
Centralized systems and processes, no regional policy perspective
EDP interpreted as a process of traditional stakeholder consultation (informing, asking feedback) with limited focus on experimentation, search, and discovery
Conflicts of logics
policy makers argued that the smallness of the countries justifies (efficiency) national coordination
the same actors argued that at the national level, it is not feasible to focus on very specific domains + the general unwillingness to “pick winners”
Results
fast specialization and little substantive change in thinking, priorities, instruments
change through implementation of RIS3?  industry partners and other stakeholders involved in project oversight and evaluations: is this lobbying or ED?
In order to make the discussion at the workshop as efficient and useful as possible, it is important to move out of the ‘classical’ presenting mood and head towards a more concrete approach to issues that need to be faced on the ground, while establishing and implementing your strategy. For this reason it is important to define a focus of your presentation, which would act as a ‘red thread’ in your presentation.
Please remember that the more linked to your presentation the questions are, the more relevant feedback you might get. By presenting the questions up front, you allow your peer critical friends to keep them in mind while you give your presentation. The questions should be repeated at the end of the presentation. Questions of a very general character can be made relevant for you specific region only if you give related information in your presentation.

5. EDP for the RIS3 implementation in E-stonia
EDP understood as a formal process of consultation and coordination that was used in the process of ‘fast specialisation’ to meet the EU conditions.
This is because
more legalistic-, hierarchical-, centralized-, and technocratic styles of policy making
weaker and formalistic types of government–academia–business interactions
Most of the funding instruments from the previous period: competence centers, centres of excellence, mobility instruments etc.
Smart specialisation used as an evaluation criteria
EST as a less developed nation depends on EU funding
Applied research projects in the fields of smart spec. – only new instrument
The role of the entrepreneurs: limited, evaluation of projects
In order to make the discussion at the workshop as efficient and useful as possible, it is important to move out of the ‘classical’ presenting mood and head towards a more concrete approach to issues that need to be faced on the ground, while establishing and implementing your strategy. For this reason it is important to define a focus of your presentation, which would act as a ‘red thread’ in your presentation.
Please remember that the more linked to your presentation the questions are, the more relevant feedback you might get. By presenting the questions up front, you allow your peer critical friends to keep them in mind while you give your presentation. The questions should be repeated at the end of the presentation. Questions of a very general character can be made relevant for you specific region only if you give related information in your presentation.

6. EDP for the RIS3 implementation (2)
The whole process has been very top-down and technocratic from the beginning.
Initiated by MKM and HTM who first ordered a quantitative analysis on the Estonian economic activities.
After the analysis the whole process was delegated to Estonian Development Fund (EDF) – qualitative analysises in forms of reports, limited amount of events/panels organized for stakeholder engagement.
EDF was dismantled because of political reasons + small scale scandals. Most of the people left the public sector.
Smart spec. back in MKM – 1 person responsible for the whole thing.
In order to make the discussion at the workshop as efficient and useful as possible, it is important to move out of the ‘classical’ presenting mood and head towards a more concrete approach to issues that need to be faced on the ground, while establishing and implementing your strategy. For this reason it is important to define a focus of your presentation, which would act as a ‘red thread’ in your presentation.
Please remember that the more linked to your presentation the questions are, the more relevant feedback you might get. By presenting the questions up front, you allow your peer critical friends to keep them in mind while you give your presentation. The questions should be repeated at the end of the presentation. Questions of a very general character can be made relevant for you specific region only if you give related information in your presentation.

7. Summary & next steps Main challenges
The implementation of ’true’ ED requires significant space for policy experimentation (design of novel and flexible policy interventions), which is highly challenging and unlikely without the EU’s conscious support by explicitly allowing and encouraging more flexible approach to ESIF rules and regulations.
Overall design of RIS3: how to make sure that RIS3 is led by the institution with policy capacities (skills, legitimacy to experiment) and stakeholder communities to be engaged in ED?
Rethink the approach in the Baltics States?
regions are ‘too small’, but are more ‘places’ than states?
national-level facilitation of policies for regions/’places’?
In order to make the discussion at the workshop as efficient and useful as possible, it is important to move out of the ‘classical’ presenting mood and head towards a more concrete approach to issues that need to be faced on the ground, while establishing and implementing your strategy. For this reason it is important to define a focus of your presentation, which would act as a ‘red thread’ in your presentation.
Please remember that the more linked to your presentation the questions are, the more relevant feedback you might get. By presenting the questions up front, you allow your peer critical friends to keep them in mind while you give your presentation. The questions should be repeated at the end of the presentation. Questions of a very general character can be made relevant for you specific region only if you give related information in your presentation.

8. Question 1: What would it take to shift the government focus from the national level to the regional/local level?
Why: National strategies are too general. Economic activities and entrepreneurial landscape is different from region to region. Regions as ‘places’.
What has been done: Municipality reform – larger municipalities as stronger partners for the government?
This slide focuses on your question: try to formulate on this slide your answers to the following questions:
What is your question/issue?
Has something been done by policymakers in your region to address this issue or is it a completely new issue?
If you have done something in this area, what are the things that worked well for you?
If there was anything you have done to address this issue and it did not work, it would be useful for other participants to learn from your experience.

9. Question 2: How could the city support entrepreneurial discovery process in the smart city context?
Why: Being smart as a new hype; (new) smart solutions can help improve the lives of the citizens but what is the exact need from the citizen and city perspective and what solutions are available?
What has been done: City as a testing platform e.g Eliko Smart Street, consultation, incubation
Problems:
In general, the city has limited options to support EDP
Problems with innovation procurements and scaling up: the legislation enables to conduct such procurements but the legalistic and technocratic style of governance hinders it.
This slide focuses on your question: try to formulate on this slide your answers to the following questions:
What is your question/issue?
Has something been done by policymakers in your region to address this issue or is it a completely new issue?
If you have done something in this area, what are the things that worked well for you?
If there was anything you have done to address this issue and it did not work, it would be useful for other participants to learn from your experience.