The innovation gap is a critical development challenge for European countries and regions. Innovation is a key driver of development. It can also widen the economic divide between territories.
Territorial cooperation is an increasingly visible component of the policy response. Innovation initiatives seek to bridge gaps and narrow divides through cooperation between territories. At the same time, efforts specifically targeting territorial cooperation, most notably Interreg, foster innovation by bringing together diverse partnerships and facilitating collaboration.
The European Commission’s High Level Group Report on the future of Cohesion Policy (2024), emphasises the importance of interregional cooperation to encourage connections between regions to facilitate knowledge transfer, innovation and investment. The 2021-27 framework for Smart Specialisation encourages complementary strengths across regions to develop and commercialise new products and services through initiatives such as Regional Innovation Valleys, Partnerships for Regional Innovation, and Interregional Innovation Investments.
As new initiatives on regional innovation stress the importance and value of territorial cooperation, established territorial cooperation initiatives and programmes are also active in the development, support, and delivery of innovation. In addition to the direct cross-border and transnational exchanges, interregional cooperation, such as Interreg Europe, and initiatives like the Vanguard Initiative, offer regions with common innovation goals and objectives an opportunity for exchange of experience and learning.
Territorial cooperation is important to innovation and innovation important for territorial cooperation. This connection is explored in an EoRPA briefing paper on territorial cooperation and innovation which notes the parallels between new innovation interventions and wider, established territorial cooperation initiatives. It notes the potential for valuable connections and exchange to help reduce innovation gaps between territories in the future, but it also raises some questions and challenges…
- Complementarity – Is there too much going on, raising issues around awareness understanding and coordination?
- Capacity – Do territories have the capacity to deal with all the possible interventions?
- Learn lessons – For new innovation in initiatives, are there opportunities to gain/build on knowhow and experience from existing territorial cooperation initiatives?
- Overlaps – Does more territorial cooperation in mean less Interreg, or does it underline the value of Interreg as support to build cooperation capacity and knowhow?
The potential for territorially based cooperation is an increasingly prominent part of innovation interventions and could continue to be in the future. As has been noted, the High-level Group on the Future of Cohesion Policy cited, for example, the added value of facilitating collaboration in a structured way as a means of territories mobilising internal development potential and participation in broader EU and worldwide networks, and of cooperation across subnational governments as a means of preventing resource fragmentation and barriers to development. This underlines the value of territorial cooperation in tackling key development concerns such as boosting innovation. It particularly emphasises the importance of interregional cooperation in encouraging connections between regions to facilitate knowledge transfer, innovation and investment.
Over successive rounds of collaboration and cooperation, territorial cooperation initiatives have built a role in facilitating the flow and exchange of information which is essential to innovation. Additionally, many programmes are increasingly well positioned to develop, apply and exploit that information, e.g. from pre-commercial research working in association with potential end users, through to product and process innovation with resulting marketable products and improved approaches to extend and improve knowhow to better manage assets and policies. The distinct contribution of territorial cooperation programmes to innovation is noted particularly in terms of: supporting action and results that address specific area needs; enabling partners to achieve scale, critical mass, and profile to take action; providing scope to initiate and extend innovation and competitiveness through collaboration; delivering productive networking and exchanges of ideas; and supporting foresight and forward planning activities.
Irene McMaster, Senior Knowledge Exchange and Research Fellow, European Policies Research Centre, The University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom.