Towards Regional spEcialisation for Smart growth spirit
Europe faces a moment of global transformation and must now take charge of its future. In the meantime, the world is moving fast and long-term challenges – globalisation, pressure on resources, ageing – intensify. Europe can succeed if it acts collectively, as a Union. Regions need a strategy to come out stronger from the crisis, overcome structural weaknesses and contribute to turn the EU into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy in accordance with the EU guidelines (e.g. Europe 2020 Strategy) to build a knowledge-based, low carbon economy with high employment levels. This calls for a deep analysis of regional capacities leading to the joint identification of the set of priorities on which stakeholders, regional innovation policies and investments should be focused on in order to better position themselves in the knowledge economy.
TRES is born with the aim to mobilise the innovation capacity and potential of regions towards smart growth. Being a policy intelligence knot for
knowledge exchange and wide cooperation. TRES also intends to boost smart policy processes in order to prepare regions to better face opportunities and challenges and become globally competitive by suggesting new promising recipes. TRES is built on a strong multidisciplinary partnership representing different realities and innovation ecosystems. TRES brings ten project partners and nine regions, a well geographically balanced partnership forming a knot for knowledge generation, strong regional and inter-regional cooperation and transfer.
TRES proposes an innovative Methodology assimilated to a “cooking process” to achieve these objectives and results. In cooking processes tradition is mixed with specialisation, innovation and creativity, being above all spaces for learning, creation and transformation as regions are. TRES suggests three inter-related Components to structure the work: C1 enables sound management and coordination from a strategic, financial and
administrative point of view. C2 enhances and ensures successful involvement of key stakeholders, supports the durability and diffusion of results by means of a web 2.0.-based dissemination and networking strategy, making TRES opinion leader. C3 defines a common framework for Good Practices identification, analysis and exchange that leads to individual Implementation Plans. C3 combines a traditional regional analysis, with a more innovative approach that pursues consortium-based and user-led decision making; it also cooks & tastes new promising recipes and actions for smart innovation and growth by looking at new approaches to increase the impact of innovation across clusters, namely stimulating cluster innovation, opportunity-driven innovation and finding out new methods to pilot these approaches. Recommendations for future action on common policy concerns will be provided making complementary competencies met in new types of collaboration.