Four years have now passed since smart specialisation officially entered European policy. The "2018 Smarter Conference on Smarter Specialisation and Territorial Development. Implementation Across Global Networks of Regions, Cities and Firms" offers a comprehensive picture of the smart specialisation policy experience, including an evaluation of its early results, and highlights recent developments both conceptually and empirically. Particular attention will be given to implementation challenges and ways to address them, as well as to methodologies for impact assessment. In addition, the conference will explore how smart specialisation engages with global value chains and production networks, and how firms, regions and cities can benefit from relationships across the borders.
The concept of smart specialisation has now expanded in geographical scope beyond just Europe. The theory and practice of smart specialisation are being constantly developed and it is enriched by these processes. These latest developments will be discussed.
Themes of interest to the conference may include:
- Smart specialisation from design to implementation: lessons, challenges, opportunities, experiences and early results
- Methods for monitoring and Evaluation
- Territorial economic analysis in support of smart specialisation
- Smart specialisation, global value chains, and production Networks
- Urban challenges and strategies for innovation and development
- Trans-regional and trans-national cooperation
- Models of regional and multi-level governance
- The Entrepreneurial Discovery Process and stakeholder involvement
- The actors of smart specialisation: research organisations, businesses, public actors, civil society groups
- Smart specialisation experiences worldwide
For the Conference Smarter 2018 the Conference Programming Committee invite papers and also proposals for complete special sessions on specific themes/areas within the scope of the conference, until the 17th May 2018.
