Smart Specialisation in sparsely populated areas: challenges, opportunities and new openings

The role of firm-level factors and regional innovation capabilities for Polish SMEs

“…Secondly, the study revealed that regional factors influence, to a different degree, SMEs' innovativeness -knowledge transfer and spillover effects stemming from the inter-regional presence of enterprises enhance only the introduction of product innovations, while the institutional milieu, proxied by the RIC measure, drives organizational and marketing innovations. Thus, we proved that the innovative behavior of Polish small and medium-sized enterprises operating in less-developed regions (by European Union standards) is dependent on the regional innovation policy and companies' collaboration patterns (Isaksen & Trippl, 2014a;Grillitsch & Nilsson, 2015;Sörvik et al, 2018). Thirdly, this study demonstrated which drivers are more important in enhancing SMEs' innovativeness.…”

“…This practical approach has evolved from the concept of a National Innovation System (NIS), through a Regional Innovation System (RIS), to the most recent Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3). From the point of view of enhancing innovations at the regional level, RIS and S3 are the most influential concepts, since a "onesize-fits-all" approach to innovation policy has proved to be ineffective (Sörvik, Teräs, Dubois, & Pertoldi, 2018). Both RIS and S3 have been the building blocks of the European Union's innovation policy.…”

“…This gives a critical argument towards the Smart Specialisation Strategy concept -since S3 is a place-based policy, which, to a large extent, relies on the innovation capability of the region, less-developed regions lack the research and knowledge base on which the strategy might be built (D'Adda et al, 2018). Another issue is the lack of internal critical mass required to trigger innovation processes -that is why intra-regional cooperation is crucial to enhance companies' innovativeness in such regions (Sörvik et al, 2018). It has been argued as well that the effective enhancement of a smart specialization strategy in less-developed regions requires the incorporation of human development and R&D promotion actions into the S3 framework (Varga et al, 2018).…”

“…For instance, a serious challenge for sparsely populated regions is the limited availability of human capital and the lack of agglomeration effects regarding economic growth(Sörvik et al, 2018).…”

Territorial patterns of R&D+I grants supporting Smart Specialisation projects funded from the ESIF in Poland

“…We address an implementation issue of national or regional Smart Specialisation where states or regions are expected to differentiate structurally (McCann & Ortega-Argilés, 2014). In the recent literature, we can find papers that try to address specificities of regions in the context of Smart Specialisation, for example, S3 in sparsely populated areas can be perceived as a challenge, but also an opportunity (Sörvik et al, 2019). Finally, we take the first step to cover the essence of the 'learning regions' approach in which internal and external interactions help local actors to develop innovations (Asheim, 2012).…”