Mario Cervantes’s lectures on Smart Specialisation and Open Science

Mario Cervantes, Senior economist, Head of Country Study and Outlook Division, Directorate of Science and Technology Policy, OECD, lectured 9 and 12 July 2013 at Higher School of Economics at the invitation of ISSEK International Laboratory for Science and Technology Studies.

Mario Cervantes, Senior economist, Head of Country Study and Outlook Division, Directorate of Science and Technology Policy, OECD, lectured 9 and 12 July 2013 at Higher School of Economics at the invitation of ISSEK International Laboratory for Science and Technology Studies.

Smart Specialisation in regions

The first lecture “Theoretical Underpinnings for Smart Specialisation Strategies” focused on the theme of choosing priorities for the maximum development of the competitive advantages of the region. It should be noted that Mario Cervantes is very active and consistent in promoting the concept of Smart Specialisation. For example, he spoke on the topic at Outreach Workshop on Smart Specialisation for Innovation-Driven Growth: Its extension to East Asia in April 2013 in South Korea. 

At the beginning of his lecture at HSE, Cervantes recalled the definition of Smart Specialisation, given by Dominique Foray. According to Foray “it is not a planning doctrine that would require a region to specialise in a particular set of industries. It is an approach to policy that considers whether those activities already strong or showing promise for a region can benefit from (more) R&D and innovation”.

The concept of Smart Specialisation emerged from Sectoral Growth Theory. It was developed in the light of finding solutions for optimization of regional innovation policies in the EU. Originally the Smart Specialisation strategy was used to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the innovation systems of European countries, identify priority areas for funding, and, finally, eliminate fragmentation and duplication of budget flows in different regions of the EU. Subsequently, the focus in this concept has shifted towards the adoption and use of general purpose technologies.

Mario Cervantes identified 11 basic principles of Smart Specialisation:

1. Growth and entry. The entry of new players entails diversification of firms and their agglomeration within innovation clusters, which ultimately stimulates economic growth in the region.

2. Innovations. They emerge in response to certain challenges that are drivers of structural changes in specific industries and market segments.

3. Specialisation (in some economic activities and certain technological trajectories). It allows for more efficient use of limited resources, and lower prices for consumers (due to economies of scale).

4. Prioritisation(of regional policy). It is implemented by using the method of “fine-tuning” as well as more sophisticated tools to assess the situation in a particular market.

5. Entrepreneurial discovery. The result of entrepreneurs’ activity is not just innovations (as individual events), but structural changes in the market. In this case, entrepreneurs do not act alone (as it is in the theory of Joseph Schumpeter), but actively interact with universities and centres of excellence, taking new ideas from them, encourage organisational and marketing innovation, produce high-demand goods for the public sector (through the system of public procurement).

6. General purpose technologies.They improve incremental innovations and the “linking” of technological and non-technological innovations, and promote structural change.

7. Regions. It is reasonable to prioritise innovation at the regional level. The result of the Smart Specialisation policy in the regions is greater diversity of innovations in the national innovation system as a whole.

8. Universities and centres of excellence. Following the principles of Smart Specialisation, Open Innovation and Open Science, universities and centres of excellence enhance their competitiveness greatly while actively collaborating with innovators and researchers.

9. Openness. It is the key feature of all actors of the Smart Specialisation policy. Development of external relations and active cooperation of multinational and local small and medium-sized enterprises, based on the principle of “think globally, act locally”, has great potential for regional clusters and innovation networks.

10. The “new” industrial policy. The policy focus is shifting from “picking winners” to enhancing framework conditions in which companies operate: developing a competitive environment, optimising control measures and funding instruments.

11. Evaluation. Monitoring and evaluation of policies help to avoid errors in the identification of priorities, and explore the “innovation climate” in the region.

The theoretical part of Mr. Cervantes’s lecture was illustrated by the empirical analysis of specialisation in Flanders, one of the regions of Belgium, which has recently started to develop its economy in line with the Smart Specialisation strategy. The most promising directions of development in Flanders have been identified using different methods.

An analysis of publication activity on the Web of Science database revealed the fields of science in which the researchers in Flanders showed the best results (academic specialisation): biology; clinical and experimental medicine; neuroscience and behavioral sciences; engineering sciences.

Patent analysis method (based on the European Patent Office database) was used to evaluate areas of technological specialisation of Flanders: textiles and paper machines; food chemistry; biotechnology.

Finally, the analysis of trends in economic indicators, monitoring the dynamics of employment, volume of production and exports in different kinds of industrial production helped to identify areas of economic specialisation in Flanders: production of coke and refined petroleum products; chemicals and chemical products; equipment for radio, television and communication equipment.

The discussion, following the lecture, focused on the implementation of the Smart Specialisation policy in the higher education sector and urban management, as well as on the procedural issues related to the assessment of scientific and technological specialisation of regions.

Opening of science to the world

At the second seminar “Open Science & Open Data: Impacts on Research and Innovation” Mr. Cervantes outlined the main points of the concepts of Open Science and Open Data, referring to their role in the development of innovations.

The concept of Open Science is postulated by the need for scientists to better interact with the society, to provide “a more open and less restricted access to scientific articles and data”. This topic is relevant in connection with some emerging challenges in the society, in particular with the necessity to support evidence-based policy, to improve efficiency in science,to foster business use of public research, etc.

The concept of Open Data refers to open access to the data that represents “inputs into new research, as well as the first-order results of that research”, it focuses on simplifying the mechanisms for disseminating scholars’ findings (so that they can serve as a basis for new research), on removing some of the limitations associated primarily with the protection of copyright and on establishing levels of access to certain data. A good example is the spread of academic publications from public R&D institutions on the Internet.

Open Data became one of the key topics on the agenda of G-8. In July 2013 the leaders of its member states have agreed on “Open Data Charter" A month earlier at a meeting in London, Ministers of Science and Education of G-8, developing a common strategy to address global challenges and maximize the social and economic benefits of research, also raised the topic of Open Data, defining it as a key policy measure that increases transparency, coherence and coordination of ongoing research in the world. The meeting resulted in a joint statement, which declared, inter alia, the following: “Open scientific data should be easy to find, affordable, measurable, comprehensible, practicable, and as far as possible it should conform to certain standards of quality”.

Open Access policy principles should be supported by an appropriate policy environment, including recognition of researchers fulfilling these principles and appropriate digital infrastructure. Availability online is not sufficient for effective open access policy. Comprehensive archives and search services are needed which, in turn, are required to index and categorise scientific literature.

The introduction of the Open Data policy can be considered in terms of scientific effect and economic impact. Online articles are more highly cited on average compared to offline articles published in the same location. Moreover, studies, either counting citations in other journals or counting web links to a paper, find that Open Access improves the impact of scientific papers. Mario Cervantes also highlighted the economic impact: increase in return on investment from open access, and the opportunity of budget savings by implementing the mechanisms of Open Access policy.

However, there are many unresolved issues relating to the implementation of the Open Data policy. Mr. Cervantes emphasized several major challenges and the OECD researches on Open Science aimed at their solutions. The basic OECD projects in this sphere are based on 1) studying models for measuring the impact of access to data, 2) developing the common standards for data achieving, and 3) finding the ways of promoting Open Data principles among scientists, companies and public research institutions.

Written by Maxim Kotsemir and Alexei Kindras