New idea of building regional innovative capacities – smart specialisations

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, low competitiveness of the economy and the deepening gap relative to the world’s economic powers was the key problem of the European Community. Also, weak innovativeness of the economy, underdeveloped R&D sector with inefficiency of public policy are seen as leading EU challenges These problems have become the basis for criticism of current innovation policy and the search for new methods, tools, and development trajectories. The answer to these challenges is the concept of smart regional specializations proposed along with a new vision of the development of the EU’s, known as Europe 2020 Strategy. Smart specialization is a new paradigm for building competitive advantage of regions. It is also a new way of regional innovation policy, aiming to eliminate barriers and failures in building innovation capacity of regions. The purpose of this article is to show the essence of the concept of regional smart specializations. Article identifies the theoretical assumptions and describes the key elements of this new approach. It exposes the novelty of the concept and identifies the challenges of its implementation.