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The growing interest to address societal challenges is changing research and innovation policy dynamics. However, a challenge-oriented approach requires specific public sector capacities to coordinate and provide directionality while having an innovation ecosystem with sufficient scientific and technological endowments to address them effectively. In this perspective, a challenge-oriented policy is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and only recently, the literature has started investigating these territorial differences. This paper proposes a composite index to assess REgional Societal Challenges-Oriented REadiness (RE-SCORE). An exploratory application is conducted to examine and compare Italian regions facing four selected societal challenges (SC)s: bioeconomy, climate change, health, and inclusive, innovative and reflective societies. The findings show that the Italian regional readiness in addressing SCs is highly heterogenous, beyond the ‘traditional’ North-South divide. The index allows to benchmark regional capacities for comparative analysis and identify possible interregional synergies around specific SCs. This approach could be used in other European countries and at the European level to assess the regional readiness to tackle SCs. Gaston Heimeriks, Utrecht University has been involved as discussant. &nbsp

The EU has recently recognised the crucial role of public authorities in promoting the interfaces between innovation actors in order to orchestrate regional innovation ecosystems (EU CoR, 2016). This paper aims to contribute to the body of knowledge of regional innovation policy-making by analysing the role that has been performed by the U.S. public sector in boosting two successful innovation ecosystems, namely the Life Science Clusters of San Diego (CA) and Boston (MA). By adopting a policy monitoring methodology, the paper breaks-down the different policy inputs and processes delivered by the public sector, targeting the two Life Science clusters. We conclude that both the public authorities of Boston and San Diego regions have been pushing for the life science industry agglomeration from an urban planning perspective, while they have been adopting different approaches in promoting the interface between innovation actors. In Boston, the public authorities actively intervene in fostering collaboration and co-creation between the several life science-related firms, through the Mass Life Science Center. In San Diego, the public authorities allow the life science ecosystem to self-organize, leaving the orchestration role to not-for-profit organizations, such as CONNECT and BIOCOM.

The paper aims at investigating how EU Regions incorporated the place-based approach (Barca, 2009) to plan their Research and Innovation Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3) within the current Programming Period 2014-2020. According with Barca, “a place-based policy is a long-term strategy aimed at tackling persistent underutilisation of potential and reducing persistent social exclusion in specific places through external interventions and multilevel governance. It promotes the supply of integrated goods and services tailored to contexts, and it triggers institutional changes.” According with European Commission (2010) about “Regional Policy contributing to smart growth in Europe 2020”, the development of S3 is crucial “to maximize the impact of Regional Policy in combination with other Union policies”. Smart specialization strategies become a key factor to stimulate private investment. And “they should be integrated into regional development strategies in order to ensure an effective partnership between civil society, businesses and public authorities at regional, national and European levels”. If we consider the theoretical background on S3 (Foray, 2000) as “a process addressing the missing or weak relations between R&D and innovation resources and activities on the one hand and the sectoral structure of the economy on the other” the link between S3 and place-based approach is envisaged is twofold: the former is based on their characterization of a development policy, the latter is based on the value of the different geographical, social, economic features that each territory can express. The transformation of these two theoretical approaches in a policy, within the cohesion policy reform, is recognizable in two drivers for programming the new Agenda 2020. The first is the Theory of Change as a fundamental approach to be followed in building the programming process (why those output/results are necessary to reach the “change”). This implies the use of “indicators” as expression of the policy and related to the value of different territories can express to control and measure the expected change. The second is more related to stimulate at regional level an integrated approach to reach a critical mass of the investment effects/impacts. The current phase of monitoring of the RIS3 through the Sevilla Platform, allows comparing the regional response to the integrated approach envisaged in the link of placebased and smart specialization policies.

The EU has recently recognised the crucial role of public authorities in promoting the interfaces between innovation actors in order to orchestrate regional innovation ecosystems (EU CoR, 2016). This paper aims to contribute to the body of knowledge of regional innovation policy-making by analysing the role that has been performed by the U.S. public sector in boosting two successful innovation ecosystems, namely the Life Science Clusters of San Diego (CA) and Boston (MA). By adopting a policy monitoring methodology, the paper breaks-down the different policy inputs and processes delivered by the public sector, targeting the two Life Science clusters. We conclude that both the public authorities of Boston and San Diego regions have been pushing for the life science industry agglomeration from an urban planning perspective, while they have been adopting different approaches in promoting the interface between innovation actors. In Boston, the public authorities actively intervene in fostering collaboration and co-creation between the several life science-related firms, through the Mass Life Science Center. In San Diego, the public authorities allow the life science ecosystem to self-organize, leaving the orchestration role to not-for-profit organizations, such as CONNECT and BIOCOM.