ENEI 2030 – SMART SPECIALIZATION: WHAT IS IT?

Smart Specialization is an approach to innovation policies according to which territories, at different levels, are encouraged to concentrate investments in R&D and Innovation in priority areas that represent competitive advantages for those territories.

Implementing this approach involves putting in place a process of Entrepreneurial Discovery conducted essentially bottom up: academia, companies, local and national authorities, and civil society must cooperate in identifying and developing NEW promising areas for investment in R&D and other innovation activities, without prejudice to being able to benefit from other instruments that contribute to achieving the recommended objectives.

The main aim of this approach is to promote a structural change in the economies, favoring the areas where each one is strongest and has the most potential, and thus boosting economic growth and job creation.

Concentrating R&D investments and efforts in terms of innovation activities in a limited number of areas will be more effective than investments and efforts spread over several areas, and there may be a risk that, in a situation of dispersion, the impact in each area will be insignificant.

Smart Specialization is an approach initiated in 2014 under the 2014-2020 Partnership Agreement and updated under the new 2021-2027 Partnership Agreement.

This is a European approach that has been implemented in several countries. In Portugal, it has been developed at national level – the National Strategy for Intelligent Specialization – and at regional level – Regional Strategies for Intelligent Specialization.

Thus, in Portugal, Smart Specialization is approached at 2 different levels:

• National level is based on a logic of inter-regional complementarity, exponentiation of regional impacts and anticipation of emerging trends;
• Regional level, which includes 7 independent regional strategies, namely: North, Center, Lisbon and Tagus Valley, Alentejo, Algarve, Azores e R.A. da Madeira;