The S3 Community of Practice (S3CoP) Working Group (WG) on Innovation Diffusion hosted a webinar titled “Understanding the bottlenecks to innovation diffusion: insights from EU regions”. This webinar is part series of webinars that the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy, with the support of the S3 Community of Practice Secretariat, is organising for S3 stakeholders from across regions in EU Member States.  

The event joined S3 practitioners, experts, policymakers, and other key stakeholders. They came together to engage and discuss the main challenges that EU regions are facing when trying to foster innovation diffusion.

The session started with the presentation of Susana Elena Caro (S3 CoP Secretariat and WG Leader) who further explained the objectives and functioning of this WG. Alison Hunter (S3 CoP Secretariat and WG Rapporteur) overviewed the insights on policy recommendations and key messages raised during the first year of work of this WG:

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After a Q&A session, the expert panel discussion started. Different regions and entities presented valuable insights on challenges for innovation diffusion:

• Luc Hulsman (Northern Netherlands Alliance) highlighted the need for a better integrated and targeted approach by targeting group differentiation, linking instruments and services and positioning them close to the target group. He also remembered the importance of being ambitious but realistic.
• Arnault Morisson (INTERREG Policy Learning Platform) spoke about good practices gained from INTERREG Europe projects, joining 74 peer reviews since 2019 and 44 matchmaking sessions.
• Ana Fernández Zubieta (Complutense University of Madrid) shared her experience on the diffusion of innovation and Smart Specialisation. She distinguished between the sociological approach to innovation and the economic approach to innovation. Moreover, Ms Fernández Zubieta remarked less developed regions need to improve institutional quality and policy coordination mechanisms.
• Carolina Turcato (EurA AG) presented findings from ACCELERO project for innovation diffusion in less innovative regions.

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The session concluded with a new Q&A session, an audience interaction panel via Slido about  the key challenges to be addressed moving forward, conducted by Santiago Donat (Aiming, 3S CoP WG Chair) and the final remarks.

Next WG meeting is expected in December 2024 and a new webinar will be organised on May 2025.

About the S3 CoP Working Group on Innovation Diffusion

The S3 CoP Working Group on Innovation Diffusion kicked off in June 2023 and pursues the following aims:

• To collect and document knowledge and good practices in different European regions
• To identify common needs, problems, and challenges
• To co-develop, support, deploy and monitor solutions to such challenges

 The working group meets twice a year, for three years, and comprises experts from the quadruple helix.

It works towards identifying and discussing a set of implementation challenges, and devising activities to address them through peer learning and expert support directly with regions. All the outcomes will be published and elaborated to ensure that they can be of support to all EU regions.

Watch the webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=LrB7ZhZdscE&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwebtools.europa.eu%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo

Check the presentation: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/policy/communities-and-networks/s3-community-of-practice/id_Presentation.pdf