Exploiting International Partnerships to Promote Innovative Investments

Smart specialisation is changing the way regions design their innovation strategies, creating or reinforcing cooperation at all levels. Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) contribute to prioritising and aligning efforts between public and private players and to allocating funds in a focused and efficient way. In the last years, S3s expanded to interregional and international levels with the creation of Smart Specialisation Partnerships (S3P). The S3P-Industry partnerships (S3P-Industry) is one of them. Over the past years, it has come a long way from a loose structural set-up to the development of joint investment projects. This was possible thanks to the Technical Assistance provided by the European Commission to help partnerships develop and evolve. The Technical Assistance Facility for Industrial Modernisation and Investment (TAF) was part of this support. This paper reports on the experience so far on such international partnerships and presents lessons learned and recommendations for future actions by policy makers to support and accelerate such strategic processes (The Smart Specialisation Platform for Industrial Modernisation (S3P-Industry) aims to support EU regions committed to generate a pipeline of industrial investment projects following a bottom-up approach—implemented through interregional cooperation, cluster participation and industry involvement. It supports industrial modernisation across the EU by facilitating the emergence of inter-regional partnerships focused on shared investment projects).