The Impacts of Policy Instruments to Stimulate Bottom-up Approaches for Smart Specialization

Abstract

This contribution presents a regional case study about the implementation of the smart specialization strategy in the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and its impacts. The analyses focus on the effects of the RegioWIN competition, as an example for a regional innovation policy instrument within the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) that pursues a place-based approach. After a brief literature review on smart specialization, place-based innovation policymaking and entrepreneurial discovery processes, the contribution draws on analyses of secondary data, desk research, and personal interviews in its empirical part. It investigates the potential for bottom-up approaches during the ERDF programming period 2014–2020 and their contribution to regional development in a European region, which belongs to the group of innovation leaders. The results show that a place-based approach leads to intra-regional differences in entrepreneurial search processes according to the prior degree of professionalization, the institutional capacity, and the involvement of different key actors during the term of the implementation. However, it will be a challenge to foster the identified technological potentials with cross-sectoral as well as inter- and intra-regional impacts over the next years, to maintain the high level of competitiveness.