Smart UAS in Smart Regions: increasing the strategic cooperation between Professional Higher Education and regions in Europe
Smart Specialisation Strategies – hereafter S3 – represent a unique opportunity for European regions to tackle societal and technological challenges, allowing their economies to adapt to the growing competitive environment. Bringing together all the relevant business, research and education, public actors and civil society – the quadruple helix – S3s help to identify the region’s own strengths and comparative assets, prioritise research and innovation investment in competitive areas, and define a shared vision for regional innovation.
EURASHE, as the European representation of professional higher education institutions, strongly advocates the inclusion of Universities of Applied Sciences – hereafter UAS – in the development and implementation of regional S3s. Through their profile as regional “boundary spanners” and their applied research, lifelong learning activities and development of new skills, UAS actively support and contribute to the competitiveness and innovation capacity of their regions. They, therefore, provide crucial input and experience in all the different phases of the design of S3: from developing a shared vision and identifying the regional priorities, to implementing the action plan and monitoring and evaluating the results achieved.
The online event “Smart UAS in Smart Regions”, organised in collaboration with the independent group of experts Friends of Smart Specialisation, will provide a platform to discuss a strengthened role for professional higher education institutions in the design and implementation of regional S3. Each webinar will focus on a different European country or region and will provide an overview of the S3 as well as case studies of the successful involvement of professional higher education institutions in their design and implementation.
More webinars will be announced in January 2021.
Check out the agendas and register for the webinars down below.
The first webinar of the online event “Smart UAS in Smart Regions” is dedicated to Portugal and will take place on Tuesday 17 November 2020, 10:30-12:30 CET.
Portugal has a multi-level Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3), which is composed of both a national strategy and seven regional strategies. The webinar will address this dichotomy by outlining, on the one hand, the main objectives and vision of the national strategy and, on the other hand, the role played by professional higher education institutions in the development and monitoring of the regional strategies, through the lenses of three Portugues polytechnics coming from three different regions (Norte, Centro and Alentejo). This will serve as an input for the panel discussion to address what worked and what didn’t in collaboration between regional authorities, businesses, civil society and academia (quadruple helix). Panelists will also discuss what can be learned from these experiences in order to take better advantage of the added value that the involvement of PHE institutions can bring to the development, implementation and monitoring of the national and regional S3s in the country.
Please find the report of the webinar here.
| Tuesday 17 November 2020 | 10:30-12:30 CET | Zoom |
|
|
10:30-10:45 |
Welcome and context setting
|
|
10:45-11:10 |
Overview from the national context: S3 in Portugal
Q&A |
|
11:10-11:45
|
Smart UAS in Smart Regions: the case of Portuguese Polytechnics
|
|
11:45-12:20
|
Panel discussion
The discussion will be moderated by John Edwards, Policy Experimentation and Evaluation Platform (PEEP) |
|
12:20-12:30 |
Final remarks and invitation to the next webinar
|
The second webinar of the online event “Smart UAS in Smart Regions” is dedicated to the Basque Country and will take place on Wednesday 2 December 2020, 15:00-16:30 CET.
The Basque Country is an autonomous community in northern Spain and presents one of the strongest Smart Specialisation Strategies in Europe. The webinar will address the specificities that make the Basque case so successful, by providing an overview of the regional S3 and discussing it with the main actors involved. The case study for this session will be provided by EURASHE member Mondragon University, whose experience in the field will highlight the specific role that professional higher education institutions can bring to the economic development of their regions, by acting as a hub between local SMEs, administrative bodies and civil society.
| Wednesday 2 December 2020 | 15:00-16:30 CET | Zoom |
|
|
15:00-15:05 |
Welcome and context setting
|
|
15:05-15:30 |
Overview from the national context: S3 in the Basque Country
Q&A |
|
15:30-15:45 |
Smart UAS in Smart Regions: the case of Mondragon University
|
|
15:45-16:20
|
Panel discussion
The discussion will be moderated by Richard Tuffs, Friends of Smart Specialisation |
|
16:20-16:30 |
Final remarks and invitation to the next webinar
|
More webinars will be announced in the upcoming weeks!