With regions and nations having formally fulfilled the ex ante conditionality, this book provides a first overall review of RIS3 policy processes, aiming to assess the consistency of the concept of smart specialization from an applied, policy-oriented perspective. Moving from the theory of design to the practice of implementation, the reflections and case studies in this volume reveal strengths and weaknesses in the way concrete strategies have been conceived and implemented, enabling reflections on the future of the concept in a more general sense. In many cases, smart specialization strategies turn out to be new variants of regional development policies, embracing the importance of a place-based approach. However, the approach’s potential to add distinctive value will stem from its capacity to turn innovation and knowledge into tools for local development by harnessing them for wider territorial development goals. By helping regions to identify and leverage untapped resources through new processes, smart specialization-based policies may help to reconcile cohesion and competitiveness objective. Consequently, new approaches appear most promising where institutional, administrative and political conditions allow the setup of genuinely new processes and where their focus is on territorial assets in a comprehensive manner rather than mere industrial renewal. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.

This book examines regional innovation in central and southern Denmark, looking at its role in the economy, its governance and policy context and regional strategies for innovation driven growth.

Illuminating and timely, this book explores several theoretical and empirical issues related to the potential for increasing capacities for innovation, knowledge and entrepreneurship. It highlights the current academic and political consensus that calls for policy interventions targeted towards more balanced, inclusive and regionally cohesive growth.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination, SPICE 2017, held in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in October 2017. The 34 full papers presented together with 4 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 65 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: SPI in agile approaches; SPI in small settings; SPI and assessment; SPI and models; SPI and functional safety; SPI in various settings; SPI and gamification; SPI case studies; strategic and knowledge issues in SPI; education issues in SPI.

Research collaboration plays a pivotal role in not only disseminating existing knowledge but also catalyzing the generation of novel insights. This book delves into the benefits that arise from research collaborations, shedding light on their multifaceted impacts. It serves as a pioneering exploration into the nexus of collaboration, knowledge convergence, and knowledge cohesion, drawing extensively from the rich literature on the EU's cohesion policy and collaboration-induced knowledge diffusion. Firstly, Knowledge Cohesion: Uniting Europe Through Research Networks unravels the nuanced interplay among collaboration, knowledge convergence, and knowledge cohesion. Secondly, it carves out clear distinctions between the realms of convergence and cohesion. Lastly, it unveils an empirical framework, offering tools for quantifying and analysing knowledge cohesion. These contributions culminate in the conceptualisation of knowledge cohesion, enriching our understanding of how collaborative research profoundly impacts the advancement of knowledge. The empirical analyses show that while the research collaboration network indicates knowledge convergence, there is no evidence for knowledge cohesion in Europe. This book stands as a resource for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners alike, inviting them to explore the nuanced interplay of research collaboration and knowledge dynamics, while presenting knowledge cohesion as a new concept.

This book focuses on the main challenges that cities, regions and other territories at sub-national level face when it comes to designing and implementing a territorial strategy for economic development and competitiveness. There is a widespread recognition that territories need to construct strategies that focus on shaping sustainable competitive advantages. To do this they draw upon their own unique resources and capabilities alongside intelligence on existing technological and market trends. However, there is still a notorious lack of both theoretical and empirical research on this issue. The first part of this book develops a theoretical framework for understanding and analysing territorial strategy. This framework asks three questions of territorial strategy – what for, what, and how – looking closely at the key relationship between strategy and policy. The second part is dedicated to exploring this framework in practice through application to a series of unique cases from around the world at different territorial levels, from regions such as the Basque Country, Navarre and Murcia in Spain, Okanagan (British Columbia) in Canada, Wales in the United Kingdom, and the cross-border region of the Øresund in Denmark–Sweden, as well as the city of Rafaela in Argentina. Each case offers something different and enables the framework to be thoroughly tested, generating concluding reflections that add real value for scholars and policy-makers interested in and working in the field of territorial strategy. This volume is intended for the academic community, the policy community (government leaders, policy-makers, policy researchers and consultants) and university students and teachers at different levels interested in the areas of territorial competitiveness, regional development, competitiveness policies and processes of territorial strategy.