This document discusses place-based policy and its implications for development. Place-based means territorial, bottom-up, multi-actor, multi-sector, integrated, grounded in evidence, and innovative. Place-based policy considers the specific assets and conditions of a geographic area. It involves collaboration between multiple local stakeholders from different sectors to pursue economic, social, and environmental objectives. Place-based policy emphasizes learning from evaluation to inform governance and support all forms of innovation in a territory. Smart specialization strategies should apply these place-based principles to avoid replicating differences in development levels across European regions.

1. Place and development
Brussels, 8th October 2013
Andrea Bonaccorsi, University of Pisa

2. Contents
• What do we mean by place-based policy
• How this affects the idea of development
• Implications for regional innovation policy and smart
specialisation strategies
• Outline of today’s presentations
• How to stay tuned
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3. Place-based MEANS
• Territorial
• Bottom-Up
• Multi-Actor
• Multi-Sector
• Integrated
• Grounded on Evidence
• Innovative
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4. TERRITORIAL
• Geographically localised
• Aware of the internal diversities of a territory
• Urban, Rural, Coast, Mountain, Islands, Inner Areas …
• Building on territorial specificities and assets
• Tapping into local resources
• Unlocking under-utilised potential
• Adapting to local conditions
• Involving/engaging local actors
• Territorial identity as lever for the participation in global
networks
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5. Bottom-up
• Balancing top-down visions
• With a co-determined and coordinated approach at
regional or sub regional level
• By the contribution of multiple actors, including:
• Policy Makers, Civil Servants
• Businesses, SMEs, Trade Unions
• Academia, Research Infrastructures ( Triple Helix)
• Third Sector, Civic Communities, User/Consumer
Associations ( Quadruple Helix)
• Individual Citizens/People ( Living Labs)
• Creatives, Lone Innovators
• Etc.
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6. MULTI-ACTOR
• Public-Private-Partnerships
• “The fourth P”
• Role of People in Co-Design
• Fighting against Poverty
• Promotion of social inclusion (e.g. foreign immigrants)
• Cultivating transparency, openness and confidence / trust
through Participation
• Multi-level Governance
• Negotiation between different goals / success criteria
• Also an evaluation challenge
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7. MULTI-SECTOR
• Territory as integrator of traditional sectors
• Shifting emphasis onto processes and competencies
(individual, collective)
• With an eye on societal challenges
• Cutting across vertical industries
• Without falling into a generic consideration of priorities
• Avoiding the risk of a linear distribution of resources
• Looking for sources of comparative advantage
• Resisting the “fractal syndrome”
• Policies and strategies designed at upper level (e.g.
EU, national) are not necessarily working fine at regional or
sub-regional level
• Implies orientation to results
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8. INTEGRATED
• Putting together
infrastructures, networks, services, industries and
communities
• Combining objectives that are
• Economic
• Social
• Environmental
• Political
• Technological
• …
• Integrating role of KETs = Key Enabling Technologies
• Development: prosperity + cohesion
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9. SYSTEMIC
• Supporting all forms of innovation
• R&D based
• Practice based
• Technological
• Social
• …
• Policy impact not following linear processes
• Aimed at activating complex system dynamics (e.g.
mass imitation and multiplier effects)
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10. GROUNDED ON
EVIDENCE
• Objectives informing actions, not vice versa
• Built-in assessment and evaluation tools
• Evaluation informing governance, not only monitoring
of expenditure
• Impact measurement through
• Output indicators
• Outcome indicators
• Fostering policy learning at both strategic and
operational levels
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11. INNOVATIVE
• Fighting the “vicious circles” of depression and the
temptations of “business as usual”
• Engaging new actors (entrepreneurial discovery)
• Exploiting new niches / sources of comparative
advantage
• Open to experimentation and stock taking
• With lessons coming from failure, not only success
stories
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12. implications
• Smart specialisation
• Don’t make it just a well written strategic
document, but the start of a new policy cycle lasting 7+
years ...
• How?
• Emphasis on PA capacity building and policy learning,
• Risk of replicating differences in maturity and
development levels across EU regions
• Regional policy should include inter-regional aspects
• Territorial Cooperation paving the way to S3
• Macro-Regional experiments
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13. Today’s presentations
The new challenge of smart specialisation for
the European regions
John Edwards, IPTS
Place as “milieu” of Living Lab experimentation
at regional level
Marco di Ciano, Innova Puglia
SpA
Widened scope for innovation and
collaboration going across the barrier of
administrative borders
Paola Capello, Piedmont Region
Learning how to manage place related issues
in development policies – the Budapest
Manifesto
DarkoFercej, eZavod
The power of creativity, in social and territorial
innovation
Jesse Marsh, TLL Sicily
A more advanced use of indicators for
evidence based policy making
Marco de Maggio, UVAL
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14. THANKS
• For more information please contact
SME Creativity and Innovation for a MED Space Smart Specialisation
Framework
cmed@comune.prato.it
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