BSR S3 Ecosystem

Smart specialisation helps regions to use their strengths to boost growth and prosperity. Yet, many regions lack methods or institutional frameworks to implement it successfully. The BSR S3 Ecosystem platform aligns smart specialisation initiatives to better steer investments across the Baltic Sea region. By sharing best practices, it activates research and academic communities, industry and public entities to strengthen the regional innovation ecosystem. The platform builds on the experiences of Interreg Baltic Sea Region’s projects LARS,BSR Stars S3, Smart-up BSR and GoSmart BSR, as well as S34 Growth, BIOREGIO, ClusterFy and TraCS3, co-founded by Interreg Europe.

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BSR S3 Ecosystem provides a much needed platform for creating a better understanding on the best practices and opportunities for smart specialization in the BSR. The Platform strives to target its activities to a wide range of BSR regions and will produce a collection of best practices and a manual for S3 regional and inter-regional implementation, a mapping of value chains within bioeconomy and digital economy, a joint S3 training programme including S3 challenge acceleration methods and a long-term dissemination strategy.

The Platform will be led by 3 pillars focusing on the following areas:

  1. Analysis, alignment and incubation of the key S3 projects across the BSR which demonstrate potential for interregional scale-up and/or advancing the value chain orientation of the BSR where each country/region should be able to identify relevant links and flows of goods, services and knowledge revealing possible patterns of integration with other regions. 
  1. Interregional learning regarding S3 implementation and capacity building function - the support required by the projects identified above will be channelled through this Pillar in order to facilitate joint understanding and capacities of the BSR regions and to generate a clear “action plan” to prepare for post-2020. 
  1. Stakeholder involvement pillar - the 2014-2020 S3 policy agenda has placed increasing importance on the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) and how the innovation ecosystem and its internal dynamic are critical enablers of improved innovation performance. The BSR has a significant opportunity to deliver this through greater investment of key innovation actors. The S3 Platform will organise events that utilise e.g. the identified best practice challenge-based methods to involve stakeholders from the whole BSR in focused interregional cooperation.


    Project duration:
    August 2019 - March 2022

    Project Partners

    Region Västerbotten
    The Baltic Institute of Finland
    Aalto University
    Lahti University of Applied Science
    Hamburg Institute of International Economics 
    Agency for Science, Innovation and Technology (MITA)
    Tröndelag County Council
    St Petersburg State Budgetary Healthcare Institution “ Medical Information and Analytical Centre”

    The Interreg BSR project hompage