Dr George Tsekouras and Despina Kanellou from CENTRIM, University of Brighton delivered a workshop on using the power of learning networks to enhance smart specialisation strategies in Croatia on the 12th and 13th of April 2018 at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb. This workshop is part of WP5 – Capacity Building Activities, Task 5.2 – Capacity building activities in networking and in project management.
The workshop discussed the current challenges by s3 in Croatia as experienced by three groups of stakeholders: people working for policy-making organisations, people working for research and technology organisations and people working for implementation agencies and SMEs owners. Established frameworks from the academic literature on research, development and innovation policy were used to make sense of these experiences.
The reported challenges were juxtaposed with the learning networks methodology to consider whether learning networks have a valuable contribution to make towards addressing these challenges. After referring to the theory and practice of learning networks, the participants had the opportunity to ‘taste’ a simulation of a real learning network session and discuss on this basis the value of learning networks for enhancing smart specialisation strategies.