Evidence revisited: literature on smart specialisation calls for more mixed research designs

Abstract

As owner of a small and medium sized company in Austria Katharina Fellnhofer is engaged in a European Union's Horizon 2020 project entitled ONLINE-S3. Additionally, as Erwin Schrödinger Fellow she works in the field of Entrepreneurship Education as a Research Visitor at the Lappeenranta University of Technology. She holds a Ph.D. in economic sciences from the

Methodology approach on benchmarking Regional Innovation on Smart Specialisation (RIS3): a joint macro-regional tool to regional performance evaluation and monitoring in Central Europe

“…Yet, since Smart Specialisation refers to "policy running ahead of theory" (Foray et al, 2011, p. 1), academic approaches towards the conceptualisation have been so far highly marginalised, thus leading to missing manifestation of the concepts in the theoretical realm. Indeed, paramount scientific contributions on Smart Specialisation and RIS3 deliver rather policy-driven contributions that lack the dovetailing of the research with the existing and developing theories (Boschma, 2014;Fellnhofer, 2017). Paradoxically, as further development of RIS3 is subject to review for future improvements, current discourses shall highly demand strong proved theoretical foundations and not only focus on practice-driven approaches.…”

Blended work and opportunities for knowledge sharing: human resource management practices to increase innovative work behaviour and life satisfaction of bridge workers

“…Through the development of smart specialisation (Fellnhofer, 2017), as well as the advance in information and communication technologies (ICT) in modern societies (Van Yperen et al, 2014), blended work, "as a contemporary form of perceived job autonomy" [Van Yperen et al, (2016), p.179], offers workers the freedom to determine their working hours (traditional office hours, in the evening, or on week-ends) and their working locations (at the office, at home, in restaurant...etc.) (Van Yperen et al, 2016).…”