Discussions about good practices around smart specialization

In the frame of the 2014-2020 programming of the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), the European Union has asked all the regions of Europe to draw up a "Smart Specialization Strategy" for research and innovation on their own territory: this is the S3.
Each region has focused its resources on the areas of innovation for which it has the best assets compared to other European regions. Administrations, companies, research centers and universities across Europe have therefore collaborated to identify the fields of activities with the most promising growth potential in their region and have proposed development models, their advantages and constraints, which benefit from specific European funds.

The S3-4AlpClusters project, supported by the Interreg V B program and in which FEMTO-ST is partner, consists in the study, analysis and reflection on the different operational models of regional economic development set up through the smart specialization strategy in the Alpine Space clusters.
This project has a total funding of € 2.5 million (including € 1.9 million of ERDF funding) and is spread over a period of 30 months (from November 2016 to end of April 2019).
It brings together 15 partners from 6 different European countries and has several objectives.

  • The first is to identify how S3 has been implemented in each partner region and to make an inventory of strengths and weaknesses.
  • The second is to analyze the synergies between the regions of the Alpine Space to study the areas in which the regions can collaborate to reach a critical mass.
  • The last objective is to trace the good practices selected by the clusters and propose the implementation of common trans-regional operational tools.

It is in this context that on March 8, several representatives of smart specialization projects from the Alpine Space Clusters (SMART INN, 3 S MEMS, μD2) met at FEMTO-ST to discuss the progress of these projects and about the possible interactions within the Interrreg S3-4AlpClusters project.

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