Smart Specialisation Strategy

About 18 Interreg Europe projects are dedicated to developing and delivering better regional policies regarding the design and implementation of smart specialisation strategies (S3). Following the structure of the handbook on Implementing Smart Specialisation Strategy, this policy brief delves into the very rich amount of knowledge created within Interreg Europe projects related to S3.

Interreg Europe projects have shared good practices and delivered concrete and transformative policy changes on regional policy challenges ranging from the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) to S3 Monitoring, offering regional policymakers the possibility to learn from practices implemented in different regional institutional contexts across Europe. The interregional exchange approach to finding the most effective policy solutions for S3 makes Interreg Europe projects the ideal space for policy learning.

This policy brief explores, in a very timely fashion, ways forward for policy design and experimentation regarding smart specialisation strategy in the context of the next programming period 2021-2027.