Smart specialization policy in the European Union: relatedness, knowledge complexity and regional diversification

By Pierre-Alexandre Balland, Ron A. Boschma, Joan Crespo, David L. Rigby. 2019

720 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT The operationalization of smart specialization policy has been rather limited because a coherent set of analytical tools to guide the policy directives remains elusive. We propose a policy framework around the concepts of relatedness and knowledge complexity. We show that diversifying into more complex technologies is attractive but difficult for European Union regions to accomplish. Regions can overcome this diversification dilemma by developing new complex technologies that build on local related capabilities. We use these findings to construct a policy framework for smart specialization that highlights the potential risks and rewards for regions of adopting competing diversification strategies.

Subfields: Management of Technology and Innovation, Materials Chemistry, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/27e18ad0e9f8f99a4ac08e21fd978835a9ae6d89

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In Management of Technology and Innovation

In Materials Chemistry

In Political Science and International Relations

Citations in the corpus

Global networks, local specialisation and regional patterns of innovation (2020, methodology): “present article offers results that can also be linked to the debate around smart specialisation strategies for local economic development, as the role of non-local linkages in generating new and complementary capabilities is yet to be fully integrated in such a policy framework (Balland et al., 201”
Complementary interregional linkages and Smart Specialisation: an empirical study on European regions (2020, background): “Following other studies (e.g., Balland et al., 2019; Rigby, 2015), we calculate the relative technological advantage (RTA) to assess whether a region becomes specialized in a technology that is new to the region.”
Economic complexity and the green economy (2020, background): “, 2016; 2014; Arthur, 1989; 1994; David, 1985; 1994; Krugman, 1991a; 1991b; 1991c; Matsuyama, 1991), efforts to measure and visualise related diversification has also provided policymakers with new frameworks to analyze industrial development policies (Balland et al., 2018; Boschma and Gianelle, 201”
Technological complexity and economic growth of regions (2020, background): “Besides its positive impact on developing technological strengths (Balland et al., 2019), our study provides empirical evidence that such a policy is likely to directly facilitate economic growth.”
Relatedness, complexity and local growth (2020, methodology): “This choice recongises that large cities facilitate a deeper division of labour than do small areas (Jacobs, 1969), and that such division is needed for complex knowledge to develop (Hidalgo and Hausmann, 2009; Balland et al., 2018b).”
Six critical questions about smart specialization (2019, methodology): “In economic geography, an increasing number of notions such as relatedness (Balland et al., 2018; McCann & Ortega-Argilés, 2015), branching (Boschma & Gianelle, 2013), variety (Frenken, Van Oort, & Verburg, 2007), etc., have been discussed under the so-called smart specialization umbrella, which…”
Public procurement, innovation and industrial policy: Rationales, roles, capabilities and implementation (2020, background): “This poses greater challenges in terms of knowledge exchange amongst cognitively (and often geographically) distant actors, but also greater potential for path creation (Balland et al., 2018).”
Regional worlds: from related variety in regional diversification to strategic coupling in global production networks (2020, background): “In the arena of regional policy and practice, one recent initiative in related regional diversification is the European Union’s Smart Specialisation programme (Balland et al., 2019; McCann & Ortega-Argilés, 2015; OECD, 2012; Whittle & Kogler, 2020).”