Purpose:The paper seeks to find the related variety of smart specialization strategies in European regions. Design/Methodology/Approach: We apply the product space methodology of Hidalgo et al. (2007) to identify the most frequent occurrences of specialization in industry, scientific or policy domains in regional innovation strategies and construct a matrix of their cooccurrences. Findings: Although to some extent regions utilize unrelated variety, i.e., homogeneous industry sections, scientific or policy domains, most regions benefit from cross-linkages between sections and domains (related variety). This latter variety may be grouped into two interconnected domains: (1) quality of life and well-being, including high-tech products that facilitate various spheres of social and economic life; (2) sustainable urban development with smart cities, green transportation, and energy conservation and effectiveness. Practical Implications: Tracing the related variety of smart specializations may facilitate an understanding of the localization and urbanization economies that benefit regions and the mechanisms behind entrepreneurial discovery processes. Moreover, the results can show the extent to which regions can differentiate themselves from others. Originality/Value: The product space methodology has not been applied to smart specializations to date. Based on this methodology and network analysis, the study provides the most common related varieties present in regional strategy documents, which can be analyzed in more detail in future research.
Purpose:The aim of the research was to examine and develop a typology of smart specializations in European regions. Such a typology is essential to compare regions in terms of the adopted innovation strategies and to assess their performance after the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy. Design/Methodology/Approach: Since smart specializations refer to 82 industries, we applied principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the number of industries on the one hand and to find a typology of a limited number of unique specializations on the other. Horn's parallel analysis indicated a maximum number of fifteen components (potential specializations in the typology). Findings: After analyzing fifteen components defined in PCA, twelve pointed to meaningful and explainable specializations that can be grouped into five domains of the typology, tourism, ICT, health, transportation, and environment. Practical Implications: Since countries and regions define their specializations very differently (narrowly or broadly), the typology developed in the study enables to articulate diverse specializations using one common language and to compare the performance of regions that have chosen one or more identical specializations. Originality/Value: The existing literature lacks a common typology of smart specializations, which may be essential in the upcoming evaluation of the Europe 2020 strategy and the performance of regions after the 2014-2020 period.
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