Search

The concept of Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) is one of the key policy instruments for Europe's regional development. The strategy considers the regional sectoral diversity to build a competitive advantage and increase the position in the knowledge economy. Particularly less-developed regions can benefit in this context when Smart Specialisation is promoted as the primary instrument of European Cohesion Policy. One strategy to develop the competitive advantage of moderate innovator regions is to develop a common, collaborative strategy to overcome regional disparities by leveraging regional growth potential. A methodology is presented by the authors, which is suggested to be accompanied for the identification of Smart Specialisation Strategies in an interregional context. The objective of this is to supply a novel method for interregional Smart Specialisation development and to improve its outward-looking orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the article, new observations on the gap between metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions are presented. The economic performance of a country mostly emanates from its metropolitan regions. As these regions profit from a highly dynamic routine, they are growing rapidly. From the outside, assumptions about the prosperity of a nation is often presumed to stay in steady proportion to the development of its economic lead. However, not only the gap between metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions is in no steady proportion, this difference also varies when observing capital city metropolitan regions and second-tier metropolitan regions, meaning metropolitan regions of a country other than the capital. The article concludes that differences between these categories are slightly shrinking, but the gaps are still enormous. Nevertheless, the dynamics of these gaps are largely overseen and the assumption that non-metropolitan regions of a country are developing in a fixed relation to metropolitan regions needs a closer investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]