Improving smart specialisation implementation of the Baltic Sea Region through orchestrating innovation hubs

Smart-up BSR

PROGRAMME 2014-2020

priority

1 Innovation

objective

1.2 Smart specialisation

Smart-up BSR

The Interreg project Smart-up BSR helped regions in eight countries across the Baltic Sea to implement smart specialisation strategies and develop their strengths in healthy ageing, climate change, circular economy and smart city.

The challenge

Smart specialisation is an innovative approach bringing local authorities, academia, business spheres and the civil society to enhance regional innovation. It enables regions across Europe to identify and develop their own strengths to boost growth and prosperity.

The experience has proved that by applying the smart specialisation approach, innovation and development policies in the Baltic Sea region have contributed to high performance and prosperity on varying grounds, either through science, knowledge and economy, or digitalisation, logistics and harbour developments.

However, inter-regional collaboration, economic transformation and implementing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are not yet a norm in the Baltic Sea region. Many regions lack methods or institutional frameworks to implement smart specialisation successfully.

The Smart-Up BSR project studied how regions work to align their ecosystems with smart specialisation initiatives to ensure the growth of their businesses and the wellbeing of their citizens. It fostered bottom-up regional innovation through peer-to-peer learning and entrepreneurial discovery process in a series of innovation camps.

Budgets

Smart-up BSR
in numbers

2.40

Million

Total
1.79

Million

Erdf
0.09

Million

Eni + Russia
0.00

Million

Norway

Achievements

Engagement for a shared vision

Smart-Up BSR addressed the challenge of making regional research and innovation strategies (RIS3) relevant and effective to a diverse set of stakeholders. It did so by pooling the dispersed knowledge and capabilities together by engaging regional actors, universities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), politicians, and businesses to create a shared vision of regional development and smart specialisation strategies across the Baltic Sea. Collective vision and strategy development help to create and maintain stakeholder commitment and a sense of ownership.

Innovation camps: networking for a brighter future

Smart-Up BSR organised ten innovation camps to facilitate the interaction between business, academia, civil service organisations, and other NGOs. The camps took place both virtually and onsite in Aarhus (Denmark), Palanga-Klaipeda (Lithuania), Tallinn (Estonia), Brandenburg (Germany), Helsinki-Espoo-Kotka (Finland), Gdansk-Gdynia-Sopot (Poland) and Riga (Latvia).

The concept was specifically designed to increase innovativeness and be a major learning instrument. The camps generated bottom-up and needs-driven innovation, providing an opportunity for co-creation, experimenting, and building trans-regional networks for more effective RIS3 implementation in the Baltic Sea region.

Cooperating across borders on smart solutions

During the innovation camps, participants addressed challenges for promoting regional smart specialisation put forward by cities, regions, universities, NGOs, and businesses across the Baltic Sea. Additionally, experts from the Committee of the Regions and EU Joint Research Centre advised participants on how to advance innovative solutions to those challenges.

The involved organisations developed and prototyped different pilots for each of the chosen thematic content areas: active healthy ageing, smart cities, climate change, and circular economy. Thanks to the better conditions to cooperate in innovation and entrepreneurship activities, regions across the Baltic Sea have enhanced their capacity to practice smart specialisation approaches.

For instance, the Aarhus pilot centred around establishing a regional GovTech Center for municipalities. This trans-regional initiative helped municipalities explore, test, and implement emerging technologies.

Another successful example is the pilot in Latvia. In this case, the University of Latvia initiated cooperation with the Riga City Council on the theme of a smart city. The partners developed the “Green University” concept for the horizontal environment and sustainability-related projects aiming at climate neutrality.

Outputs

Book on smart specialisation strategy implementation in the region

The book on “Sustainable Baltic Sea Region. Towards Economic Transformation by Smart Specialisation Strategies” provides an overview of how partners of the Smart-Up BSR project understood and contributed to the Smart Specialisation strategy creation and revision in their region preparing the path towards economic transformation. It outlines the processes of Smart Specialisation strategy creation and how the prioritisation of regional spearheads was achieved in the Baltic Sea region examples.

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Quick Guide for Organising Innovation Camps

The quick guide targets regional decision-makers, especially those novel to the innovation camp methodology. It contains easily-to-implement instructions for innovation camps and explains why camps are effective innovation instruments for addressing both local and transregional issues, and how they can be beneficial in a variety of situations.

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Leaflet about the Cities as Innovation Platforms

This leaflet presents a collection of guiding concepts and frameworks to help cities reflect on how they can act as an enabler for innovation. These frameworks and concepts enable a city to reflect on possible pathways to building innovative skill sets, attitudes, strategies, policies, and initiatives. It contains examples from cities in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Russia that demonstrated some of the skills and practices described in the frameworks.

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Guidebook on Regional Pilots

The guidebook gathers and analyses thematic pilot reports conducted in Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Russia. It includes a selected group of activities around the concept of thematic piloting (active healthy aging, smart city, climate change, circular economy) as a method to increase innovativeness at the inter-regional level. The presented results function as a guide for other regions both in the Baltic Sea macro-region and elsewhere in Europe.

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