In the world, in Europe, in Catalonia, we are immersed in a paradigm shift at all levels. Everything around us is changing at a dizzying pace. Rapid technological advances, Internet and the digital networks have generated a technological and cultural rupture that is affecting the most diverse sectors of society: institutional systems, power relations between groups, access to information and services, social structures, business models, research and innovation models, relations between governments and citizens and more. The great challenges that face us as a society (unemployment, population aging, climate change, etc.) urgently demand new responses.
For the 2014-2020 period, the European Union called on all regions to draw up and implement regional innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3 strategies), co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The objective of RIS3 strategies is to focus the economic and knowledge specialisation of regions (based on their resources, strengths and capabilities) and to promote action plans providing public support for innovation to strengthen the competitiveness of the territory and foster more sustainable and inclusive growth.
RIS3 strategies are based on open innovation models in which, besides companies, research and innovation actors and governments, citizens must also be present, as they are the main beneficiaries and users of innovations. This is particularly important in a context in which new responses to the great economic, social and environmental challenges necessarily entail changes in behaviour at both individual and societal scale.Llegeix més »