Smart specialization and place leadership: dreaming about shared visions, falling into policy traps?

Abstract

The concept of smart specialization has rapidly acquired a central position in European policy and academic circles. It raises interesting challenges for the regional studies agenda. First, smart specialization is about not only policy formulation, implementation and evaluation but also pooling scattered resources, competencies and powers to serve both shared and individual ambitions. Thus, policy formulation and implementation need to be seen in a new light. Second, when smart specialization is seen as one of the platforms for aligning several actors to boost regional economic development, the need to understand agency in its multiplicity emerges as central. This paper argues that to achieve truly transformative smart specialization strategies, there is a need to investigate in more depth the multi-actor strategy processes and new forms of leadership, as well as to invest time and money in advancing related capabilities across European regions.

Shaping smart specialization: the role of place-specific factors in advanced, intermediate and less-developed European regions

“…Low levels of formal competences and financial endowments at the regional level can be expected to lead to various 'autonomy challenges' in the implementation phase of S3. Whilst the degree of decentralization shapes the room of manoeuvre for regional innovation policy-making, much depends on the institutional structures and quality of government found in the region (Kroll, 2017;Rodríguez-Pose & Di Cataldo, 2015) and the capacity and knowledge of actors in the policy and administrative system to design and implement modern regional innovation strategies such as S3 (Kroll, 2015;Sotarauta, 2018). Past policy practices and policy path dependency may be powerful barriers to the adoption of new innovation policy approaches (Aranguren, Magro, Navarro, & Wilson, 2018;Morgan, 2017).…”

Understanding the strategic ‘black hole’ in regional innovation coalitions: reflections from the Twente region, eastern Netherlands

“…In other words, the success of the strategies crucially depends on active transformative activities conducted by motivated stakeholders. Nevertheless, whether regional partnerships are actually equipped to deliver what is expected and how regional stakeholders can be mobilized into action are matters that have as yet received little consideration within policy formulation (Capello & Kroll, 2016;Sotarauta, 2018).…”

Smart specialisation as place-based policy. Lessons learnt?

“…This is why it is also important to look at actors implementing strategies 'on the ground', since they have key skills and practical knowledge that assist policymakers and managers in their understanding of problems and the context for its solution (Ansell et al, 2017;Flanagan and Uyarra, 2016). As Sotarauta (2018) points out in a recent paper, we need to pay more attention to agency in smart specialisation, including policy implementers and project champions who bridge the gap between policy definition and implementation.…”