Last week, our Seminar Series resumed with two excellent presentations by our colleagues at Edinburgh University. Dr Alessandro Rosiello and George Papamichail presented their joint paper “Addressing public policy implementation challenges in catch-up regions through the analytical lens of Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3)”. This topical concept has been a central focus of many of EPRC's recent activities and articles.
The paper shows how smart specialisation acts as an inclusive tool for integrating minorities in mixed in the high-tech sector. Looking at the case of Israel, Alessandro argued that successful implementation of smart specialisation is possible in the unique context of a mixed region and offers inclusive policy recommendations for the implementation of smart specialisation in lagging regions. George took the S3 focus to innovation strategies in southern Europe, specifically in the Greek regions of Crete and Central Macedonia. These served as two examples for catch-up regions with prolonged economic recession, weak institutions and profound difficulties in implementing S3. He presented about the work for his PhD thesis, which he successfully defended earlier this month. Congratulations George!
We want to thank the presenters for sharing their excellent work, which led to interactive discussion in the second half of the seminar about the academic conceptualisation of S3, the case study contexts and tackling specific regional problems. We hope to hear more of their work in the future.
Watch this space for more updates on our 2019 seminars.