Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) have become central to EU Cohesion Policy, guiding regional growth, innovation, and competitiveness. They emerged to address fragmented policies and regional disparities. For Ukraine, smart specialisation is the EU’s key language for regional innovation and place-based development. Understanding S3 is vital for Ukrainian regions, RDAs, and ministries to support EU accession and to use EU tools domestically.

This article is written for readers who are not S3 experts but who repeatedly encounter terms such as entrepreneurial discovery or the quadruple helix and want to understand how these concepts connect. If the text raises as many questions as it answers, it has fulfilled its purpose. Readers are encouraged to continue exploring the original EU guidance, the Smart Specialisation Community of Practice, Joint Research Centre publications, and practitioner networks such as Friends of Smart Specialisation.

In part 1 of the series «Smart Specialisation – Present and Future», we review how Smart Specialisation, as we know it now, came to be a core part of regional innovation and growth in the EU. We focus on explaining the concepts that build the big picture of S3 and review the historical steps taken before the Smart Specialisation entered the implementation cycle. The implementation experience of the first (2014-2020) and second (2021-2027) cycles is elaborated in part 2, and in part 3 we have a look at the possible evolution of S3 based on the gained experience and the proposal for the 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework.

The material is developed by the Swiss–Ukrainian project UCORD, in cooperation with the European Association of Development Agencies (EURADA) and the Decentralization portal. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, or NIRAS Sweden AB.

Defining Smart Specialisation and Its Purpose

In the Regulation (EU) 2021/1058, a Smart Specialisation Strategy, usually shortened to S3, is defined as a strategy that sets “priorities at national or regional level, or both, to increase their competitive advantage by developing and matching research and innovation strengths with business needs and necessary skills through an entrepreneurial discovery process”.

 

 

As Richard Tuffs of the independent expert group “Friends of Smart Specialisation” puts it: “smart specialisation helps regions focus their innovation spending on their potential and actual strengths, to promote economic growth – specialising smartly”. He adds: “Smart specialisation has now had 15 years of both theoretical attention and of course practical experience in regions … [It] should evolve to play a strong role in growing regional economies within a changing economic and geopolitical climate”.

So, let’s review: how was S3 introduced and how is it evolving? Even though the concept was named in the 2000s, its priorities have shifted, so let’s explore the history of smart specialisation since the 2010s and learn more about the core terms and concepts associated with it.

How S3 Entered EU Policy

To understand how smart specialisation as a concept came to be, we turn to historical reference provided in the European Court of Auditors’ (ECA) 2025 review “Smart specialisation strategies in the EU”: S3 emerged in the 2000s, even though since the early 1990s its central premise was already in circulation: regions should concentrate innovation efforts on a limited set of distinctive assets instead of dispersing resources across many directions. After the introduction of the 2000 Lisbon Strategy, the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) mobilised policy thinking, while the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) was simultaneously elevating innovation within cohesion policy. European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) financing was already supporting a broad range of innovation-related actions across regions.

Persistent weaknesses remained, however. Regions struggled to demonstrate what they were genuinely good at and to translate analysis into credible priorities. Smart specialisation emerged as a proposed remedy, first highlighted in the 2009 Barca Report and later mainstreamed through a 2010 Commission Communication. Under the Europe 2020 strategy, it was framed as a core instrument for territorially tailored innovation policy that would contribute to the strategy’s three reinforcing goals: smart growth, sustainable growth, and inclusive growth.

Between 2011 and 2013, the Commission moved from concept to practice. Guidance documents were issued, peer learning was encouraged, and regions were supported in drafting strategies ahead of the 2014-2020 programming period. At this stage, Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3) became the formal policy vehicle. Today, “RIS3” and “S3” are largely used interchangeably; the original emphasis on research and innovation simply reflects where the approach was first anchored.

The Core Concepts of S3

According to the Commission’s guide to RIS3 released in 2012, the core rationale behind the S3 is that “by concentrating knowledge resources and linking them to a limited number of priority economic activities, countries and regions can become – and remain – competitive in the global economy”.

As the guide highlights, new approaches to RIS3 were a response to the inefficiency in identifying priorities and practical forms of cooperation between regions in the previous regional innovation strategies (RIS). These earlier RIS should not be confused with research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3), RIS are an earlier policy tool that, since 1994, has served to develop innovative capacity in the regions.

To combat the regional innovation challenges, the RIS3 guide continues, “smart specialisation addresses the difficult problem of prioritisation and resource allocation decisions by allowing entrepreneurial actors to demonstrate the most promising areas for future regional development” through an ‘entrepreneurial discovery process’. Often shortened as EDP, it is the engine of smart specialisation, and according to the aforementioned regulation, it “should allow entrepreneurial actors, including industry, education and research organisations, public administrations and civil society, to identify the most promising areas for sustainable economic development based on a region’s distinctive structures and knowledge base”.

In other words, the EDP aims to synthesise knowledge from science, technology, and engineering, and relate it to the market needs and realities, such as growth potential, business competition, and new activities. It’s important to highlight that this doesn’t automatically lead to a policy, but rather it structures political decision-making around evidence and stakeholder validation.

The actors mentioned in the official EDP definition are not accidental. Because the relevant knowledge is widely distributed across different stakeholders, public-private partnerships are key to helping policymakers improve their understanding of their own region. These actors constitute the “quadruple helix” – public authorities, businesses, universities, and civil society – and foster a more dynamic, genuinely place-based entrepreneurial discovery process, thereby accommodating diverse innovations.

The quadruple helix is the key part of the bottom-up process in designing S3. The opposite, top-down process of alignment with EU policies is utilised to complement the successful identification of innovation and research priorities, which, together, lead to the definition of a coherent policy mix, roadmaps, and an action plan. This is done with integration of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms into the strategy and its components from the very beginning.

All of these processes are inward-looking, though, at the regional or country level. So, let’s look outward. Here, the purpose is to leverage the best available knowledge and jointly achieve economic growth to be competitive in the global economy.

So, transnational and interregional cooperation became increasingly important for facilitating access to broader business and knowledge networks, securing essential research capacity, opening doors to new markets, expanding business opportunities, combining complementary strengths, and enabling participation in global value chains. Crucially, engaging in transnational and interregional collaboration represents a strategic investment that stimulates economic growth for all participating countries and regions.

The outward-looking shift was supported by the Commission’s launch of the Smart Specialisation Platform (S3P) in 2011, in collaboration with the Joint Research Centre (JRC). S3P helped EU countries and regions develop and deliver RIS3 by providing methods, expertise, peer reviews, and advice, and by facilitating mutual learning and cross-border cooperation through technical assistance, training, joint analysis, study visits, and online tools.

While no longer operational, S3P represented the sharing of know-how and peer learning between EU regions, which remains relevant. In 2023, the Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) replaced

the platform with a Smart Specialisation Community of Practice (S3 CoP) – “a central node for guidance, networking, support and peer-learning on S3, covering its design and its implementation of the S3”. The community of practice hosts practice guides and tools, and is used to plan and organise related events.

The 4 C’s of Smart Specialisation

Taken together, all ideas mentioned in the article are often summarised as the 4 C’s of smart specialisation – (Tough) Choices and critical mass (have few priorities in the international value chain, avoid duplication and fragmentation); Competitive advantage (match R&I potential with business using the entrepreneurial discovery process); Connectivity and clusters (match what you have with what the rest of the world has); Collaborative leadership. They are the leading elements of an RIS3 design process, which is implemented in the following steps:

1. Analysis of the regional context and potential for innovation,
2. Set up of a sound and inclusive governance structure,
3. Production of a shared vision about the future of the region,
4. Selection of a limited number of priorities for regional development,
5. Establishment of suitable policy mixes,
6. Integration of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

With this conceptual foundation in place, we can now turn to how S3 performed once it became a real funding condition. In part 2, we will review the implementation experience during the 2014–2020 and 2021–2027 programming periods with a focus on aspects of particular interest to Ukraine.