How outward looking is smart specialisation? Rationales, drivers and barriers

The emergence of Smart Specialisation as place-based policy has attracted much scholarly debate. However, interest on the topic has been devoted principally to the process of entrepreneurial discovery and its embedded selective mechanisms for R&I policy. This paper focuses on a less investigated dimension of Smart Specialisation, and specifically on the capacity of S3 to contribute to inter-regional connectivity via the outward looking approach to cooperation promoted by Smart Specialisation policies. In doing so, we use original data collected from a survey of EU regions and neighbouring countries and complemented by in-depth interviews. The survey collates information on instruments of collaboration and discusses drivers and barriers encountered by the regions during the implementation of their outward looking strategies of collaboration. Our results suggest that, while the value of collaboration and the options offered by the outward looking feature of S3 are widely recognised, lack of political commitment, relational inertia and complexities associated to joint programming and availability of R&I instruments are hampering the development of long-term collaborations between regions in EU.