Smart specialisation, entrepreneurship and SMEs: issues and challenges for a results-oriented EU regional policy

Abstract

This paper discusses the ways that European regional policy has been re-shaped in order to build on the role played by entrepreneurship in driving regional innovation. The various lines of re-thinking which have helped to reform the policy draw heavily on modern theories of entrepreneurship and innovation, and these insights have contributed significantly to many of the elements of new policy logic and framework. Yet, these ideas also derive both from worldwide, rather than EU-specific insights, and also from a wide range of academic fields. Setting the EU agenda within the broader global context is therefore also important in order to help identify both the commonalities and differences between policy approaches in different types of places.

Related variety, unrelated variety and regional growth: the role of absorptive capacity and entrepreneurship

“…We have investigated the effect of related and unrelated variety on Our finding that any type of industry diversity is conducive to regional growth contradicts policy concepts that favor a certain type of variety such as the EU smart specialization strategy that focusses on related variety (Foray 2015;McCann and Ortega-Argilés 2016). In contrast to such steering policy concepts that discriminate against certain types of economic activity our analysis suggests that the promotion of regional R&D and of regional entrepreneurship are much better suited to stimulate regional development.…”

“…This pertains particularly to the 'smart specialization' concept of EU cohesion policy that clearly favors related variety and aims at steering regional industry structures into that direction (Foray 2015;McCann and Ortega-Argilés 2016). There have been quite a number of applications of the variety concept to European economies.…”

Soundness and Sustainability Research in the Regional and Settlement Development Programmes (2014-2020)

“…Intelligent specialisation has become one of the topics of EU debates, however, it still has a logic [9]. In order for the EU to be successful, the policy -just like the regional policymeant the involvement of more partners operating on the various levels of government.…”

“…McCann and Ortega-Argilés [9] state that the SMEs are special stakeholders of the intelligent specialisation policy. The focus in some regions of Europe is put on launching new enterprises, while in other regions the priority is the increase of the number of existing enterprises and again in other regions the development of the supply chain can be prevailing.…”

Improving Employees Behavior through Extension in Theory of Planned Behavior: A Theoretical Perspective for SMEs

“…Generally speaking, job behavior is the way an employee responds to his work, task and responsibility and that response is either positive or negative depending on how employee views his interest and the company (Mafini & Pooe, 2013). SMEs played pivotal role in economic development (Beck & Weitzel, 2005;Günterberg & Kayser, 2004;Hollenstein, 2005;McCann & Ortega-Argilés, 2016;Michaelas, Chittenden, and Poutziouris, 1999;Wonglimpiyarat, 2015). Meanwhile, SMEs use to be more vulnerable because of their limited resources (Festing, 2007).…”