A policymakers guide to transnational learning in smart specialisation

Smart Specialisation (S3) is a new framework for research and innovation strategies which together with other instruments, such as Horizon 2020 is designed to pull Europe out of its current economic problems. Successful RIS3 strategies are improving and sometimes changing conditions promoting innovation, competitiveness and growth. In order to do so, RIS3 operates with six steps of planning, outlined in the S3 Guide. Core issues in this policy brief are 1. What are the ambitions of Smart Specialisation when it comes to transformation of RIS in a way which can deliver the over-all objectives of solving the European economic crisis? 2. How can this be done in practice in the context of the framework of planning defined by the 6 steps outlined in the S3 Guide? In discovering, promoting and implementing these improvements, transnational learning is a promising and potentially powerful tool. However, attempts to organize transnational learning may easily fail. This brief explains how it can succeed, with reference to the six steps of the S3 Guide. The brief tentatively discuss a typology of S3 strategies, understood as 5 distinctly different "drivers of change" in RIS (deindustrialization, innovation system inefficiency, entrepreneurial discoveries, new paradigm creation and transnational inter-regional co-specialisation). This typology is intended to illustrate how transnational learning may play different roles in S3 policymaking.