1. The future of smart specialisation Maximising Europe’s Innovation Potential Stockholm, 18 April Peter Berkowitz Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy

2. The Smart Specialisation Experiment in Europe
Place-based transformation embedded in local economy
Dynamic entrepreneurial discovery process uniting key stakeholders around shared vision
Evidence-based
Mobilisation across different departments and governance levels – triple/quadruple helix
Broad innovation
Concentration of resources on priorities
Integrated into Cohesion Policy ( ) as ex-ante conditionality:
EUR 40 billion from ERDF to finance R&I projects (EUR 65 billion including co-financing)
Over 120 smart specialisation strategies supported by the S3-Platform
It helped regions and MS in:
developing a strategic approach to innovation
prioritising R&I investments
breaking down silos

3. A growing innovation divide
The 2017 Innovation Scoreboard shows that several Member States perform less well than China and 5 member states less well than Turkey.
The Regional Innovation Scoreboard shows 24% of EU regions are considered an innovation leader.
Only one in ten EU regions has an R&D intensity that reached the Europe % target of R&D expenditure in GDP.
Regional innovation performance has diverged since 2011.
It has increased for 60% of all regions, but declined for all regions in Romania, and for more than 50% of regions in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Portugal and Spain.
In Italy, in 12 regions performance has improved, while in 8 it has declined.

4. Maximising Europe’s innovation potential
Work with regions to
Target regional and local investment needs, skills gaps and regulatory obstacles
Develop smart specialisation strategies to build on strengths to
Help regions identify how to move up value chains and stimulate private investment
Target investments on key priorities and challenges
Encourage disruptive and high-tech innovation but also broad innovation in traditional sectors
Encourage a stronger focus on inclusive growth
Strengthen connections in the Single Market and ERA to
Match public and private capacities across regions
Create economies of scale
Increase participation in global value chains
Improve international access to skilled workers and research networks

5. “Strengthening Innovation in Europe's Regions Strategies for resilient, inclusive and sustainable growth” COM(2017)376 & SWD(2017)264
Reforms of R&I Systems
Innovation investments across regions
Less-developed and industrial transition
regions
Synergies and complementarities between EU policies and instruments
S3 as a response 5

6. Reforms of R&I Systems
The European Semester process has shown that reforms of R&I systems have a clear regional dimension.
So far, smart specialisation has contributed to:
Put in place reforms in about half of the EU MS
Help address many R&I challenges
Break down silos between administrative bodies and improve multi-level governance
Challenges ahead:
Intensify efforts for reforms in R&I systems
Create an enabling business environment
Improve conditions for the creation and growth of start-ups
Encourage investments in skills and human capital

7. Development of a comprehensive strategy for economic transformation
Broad innovation and inclusive growth building on smart specialisation strategy
Multi-sectoral focusing on jobs, industrial sectors, business models, economy and society as a whole
Addressing globalisation, automation, decarbonisation, emerging and digital technologies, skills and investment

8. Promoting innovation investment across regions
Stronger strategic inter-regional cooperation and sustainable linkages between regional ecosystems along smart specialisation priority areas can help increase diffusion and encourage non-linear and open innovation
Thematic Smart Specialisation Platforms: joint EC’s initiative set up in December They focus on industrial modernisation, energy and agri-food. More than 80 regions around 17 partnerships.
Vanguard Initiative: a network of 30 EU regions with strong political commitment to use their RIS3 to boost new growth. It seeks to help regional clusters and eco-systems to focus on priority areas for transforming and emerging industries.
Already existing models of cooperation:
Where is there a need for additional EU support?
Encourage the commercialisation and scale-up of inter-regional innovation projects
Incentivise joint business investment through national and EU instruments
Leverage other large European R&I initiatives with these platforms and their regional partnerships

9. Test new ways to: 
Commercialize and scale-up interregional innovation projects that can create or reshape European value chains 
Attract private investment for promising innovation projects
Explore and strengthen synergies between different EU instruments (ESI funds, the Investment Plan, Horizon 2020, COSME)

10. Synergies and complementarities
Despite the improvements in coordination at the level of the cohesion policy programmes, at project level there is still a need for a greater clarity of roles, responsibilities and coordination, notably in relation to eligibility rules, procurement and state aid and with transnational projects.
Further address complexities in combining funds
Facilitate and clarify the combined use of different funds in relation to state aid rules, public procurement and interregional cooperation
Provide stakeholders with a comprehensive mapping of support actors and R&I facilities across Europe
Omnibus Regulation to facilitate transnational investments

11. Key issues for smart specialisation post-2020
How to better adapt RIS3 to different regional needs?
How to broaden innovation and reinforce innovation diffusion?
How to strengthen interregional investment?
How to improve links with other EU programmes such as FP9 and industrial competitiveness policies?
How to make RIS3 more responsive to industrial and technological disruption?
How to strengthen monitoring and evaluation, lesson learning?
How to strengthen and embed governance, moving from RIS3 to RIS4?

12. Thank you!