Putting Digital Innovation Hubs into Regional Context

октомври 1, 2019 nauka

Off

Putting Digital Innovation Hubs into.pdf

Executive Summary
While digitalisation is oftentimes thought of as a global megatrend and something that transcends
national borders and geographical distances, it is at the same time a very tangible process that
exhibits considerable regional and sectoral variation. Against this backdrop, Digital Innovation Hubs
(DIHs) constitute an important complementary and regionally anchored policy instrument to match
other EU-wide initiatives such as those associated with the Digital Europe Programme planned by
the European Commission to start in 2021. Such a regional take on digitalisation also coincides with
other policy instruments focused on territorial development such as Smart Specialisation Strategies
(RIS3), thereby creating potential synergies and interactions between policy initiatives.
The aim and scope of this report is to provide an overview of the current state of DIHs registered in
the Online Catalogue tool1 (yellow pages of DIHs) with respect to variations in regional digitalisation
as well as to other regional policy initiatives and in particular Smart Specialisation Strategies. The
report is based on a survey sent out primarily to DIH managers but also to regional policy managers
working with Smart Specialisation Strategies. Because of its general nature, the survey does not
give causal interpretations of the DIHs impact on regional development, or of how regional
variations impact the development of individual DIHs. Instead, results should first and foremost be
interpreted in terms of variation and of correlation, providing a picture of what role DIHs have taken
in their respective regions.