Smart Specialization and Sustainability
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2019) | Viewed by 7686
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The accelerated globalization of product markets triggers the radical transformation of the economic systems of trading partners and questions their economic and social sustainability. The search for a new role in the division of labor calls attention on the high levels of heterogeneity and variety of their regional factor markets and the major opportunities provided by the consequent pecuniary externalities. Smart specialization consists in: i) the identification of rare and cheap intermediary inputs, both tangible and intangible in local factor markets; ii) the appreciation of hidden and unexploited complementarities; iii) the valorization of localized knowledge based upon learning processes; iv) the introduction of biased technological change, that is able to increase the technological congruence of the production process increasing the intensive use of inputs that are locally abundant, v) the diversification of incumbents in related activities that enable to take advantage of proximity in the regional and product space, and vi) the dynamics of entrepreneurship able to discover the competitive strength of the unique availability of cheap and abundant inputs. At the firm level smart specialization strategies lead to integrated glocal value chains that are able to valorize the heterogeneity of local factor markets with the variety of global product markets within general purpose platforms. At the policy level, the smart specialization approach enables to better integrate the centralized top-down and decentralized public interventions of regional, industrial, knowledge, development and innovation policies.
Prof. Cristiano Antonelli
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- factor markets
- hidden complementaries
- pecuniary externalities
- localized knowledge
- directed technological change
- technological congruence
- related diversification
- entrepreneurship
- general purpose platforms
- growth strategy
- integrated economic policy
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