Carlo Gianelle (p), Fabrizio Guzzo

Donato Iacobucci

This paper analyses the complex network structure of collaborations projects in research and innovation financed under the European Cohesion policy. It aims at constructing an empirical benchmark to evaluate the effects of the Smart Specialisation policy, once complete data will be available.
Using micro data from Italy covering the Cohesion policy programming period 2007-2013 – before the adoption of Smart Specialisation – we map inter-organisation collaborations on a weighted, undirected graph. We first verify the extent of which the network exhibit small-world properties, then we look at the connectivity distribution of nodes (organisations), and highlight the role of important hubs. In particular, we analyse the function of research institutions, universities, and regional university systems in guaranteeing network integration and potential long-range knowledge flows.
Based on the evidence gathered, we the formulate a series of hypotheses regarding the effects of the Smart Specialisation policy on the structure of research and innovation collaborations and we translate them into network topological properties that can be empirically investigated.
The contribution of this study to the literature is twofold. First, it provides a detailed analysis of the emerging topological characteristics of the inter-organisational collaboration network at a national scale, based on information on the participating organisations, and offers a range of insights on how the emerging network structure shapes knowledge creation and diffusion. Second, it provides a clear empirical counterfactual against which to identify the effects of the Smart Specialisation policy adopted by the European Commission as a guiding principle for investment in research and innovation starting from 2014.

Mathieu Doussineau (p), Katerina Ciampi Stancova

Cristina Serbanica

The emergence of RIS3 requests a new approach in envisaging the monitoring and evaluation. As Monitoring and evaluation processes should be strongly linked, an additional layer of complexity has appeared impacting also directly our way to envisage the evaluation process. Technically and ethically, the evaluation should be independent from managing authorities (implementers) and monitoring not. The combination of the two approaches should lead to concrete recommendations. Monitoring should feed independent external evaluation. Objective of the evaluation process is to capture impacts of measures implemented through strategies. Evaluating public policies at mid-term triggers important challenges and bottlenecks. First, because the strategy is ongoing, the evaluation process has to cope with the incompleteness of the information with a lack of tangible information (scarcity of indicators). Evaluation cannot then only be based on quantitative reliable information but also on more qualitative element of impact. This scarcity of quantitative information makes any pure econometrical approach not possible when academic theories of evaluation are mostly based on a quantitative approach.
Moreover, the originality of the RIS3 approach is that it requests a behavioural change from managing authorities and stakeholder, avoiding the maximum as possible silo thinking approach. In this respect, not the impact of the implementation RIS3 should be evaluated but also the design phase which requested a significant stakeholder's engagement through the EDP with choices taken at this moment. The 2016 report on Cohesion Policy and Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3) has pointed that strategies have delivered a mixed picture, notably regarding the choice of priorities, which is often seen as too generic or insufficiently connected to regional economic and innovation structures, meaning that smart specialisation strategies need to improve in this regard.
Ex-post Public policies evaluation theories seem to be disconnected from the practice. The lack of policy implication in evaluation theories reduces their utility when feeding the policy cycle with concrete recommendations. The question would be how to design a generic methodological approach to provide to regions for the evaluation of their respective Smart specialisation strategy considering the lack of tangible information and the important behavioural dimension of the S3 process and the high disparity regions (in terms of size, economy, role in the national ecosystems etc.)

Cristina Serbanica (p), Iuliana Talmaciu

Carlo Gianelle

See Extended Abstract