Collection: Industrial Pact Working Papers
Throughout the years, the literature on regional competitiveness and development has set out the conceptual frameworks that have accompanied the corresponding policies. This is the stage we find ourselves at in Europe, faced with the challenge of addressing smart specialisation strategies. We have become familiar with this concept very quickly, although its implementation is experiencing certain difficulties. First, this document presents a diagnosis of the problems encountered during the process of implementing these strategies in the Basque Country. It then puts forward a number of lessons that have been learnt, including the need to explicitly address the ideological debates that underlie these processes and examine the role that the university can play – and, more specifically, the role that research can play – in meeting the challenges of implementing territorial strategies.