Smart specialisation strategy for
the South-Estonia
2014 Spring
Garri Raagmaa UNIVERSITY of TARTU garri@ut.ee +372 527 8899
South-Estonia in a Nutshell
• 325 th. inhabitants & 15 th square km territory
• Traditionally dominated by agriculture and forestry
• Peripheral location: 2-4 hours driving distance from
the main transport hubs - capital Tallinn or Latvian
capital Riga (only one flight to Helsinki from Tartu)
• South-Estonian centre Tartu is old university and
medical centre
– characterised by low level entrepreneurship
– dominance of publicly financed institutions
Overall context
• Estonia depends 2013-20 heavily on EU investment
grants
• EU requirements for the strategies of smart
specialisation
• Estonian central ministries act like silos – everyone
has it’s own smart specialisation
• Local authorities are dispersed and have low
administrative and development capacity
• Predominant is centralist and elitist approach:
– Understanding smart specialisation as something high
tech and science related
– smart specialisation so far managed from Tallinn only
Warning of too narrow approch in SS by D.Foray
Sectoral
level
Sleeping
giant
agrofood
Excited
goblings
high tech
cluster
Hungry
dwarfs
low tech
SMEs
A narrow view
of smart
specialisation!
Source: Foray 2012
Central agencies of SS
• Ministries of Education and Economy
– Development Fund and Estonian Enterprise as
implementing agencies
• Ministry of Interior – regional SS
• Ministry of Agriculture
– Primary sector R&D
– LEADER programmes
• Ministry of Culture – creative industries
• Ministry of Social Affairs –
– Major investments to hospitals
– training programs
South-Estonian (SE) approach to SS
• Everybody, except Tallinn civil cervants, hate papers!
• Awareness rising and involvement of SE institutions
– Larger local governments
– County governments
– Regional business development centres (BAS)
• Defining growing business sectors and their needs for
R&D
• Involving central ministries and agencies to the process
– Promoting place based entrepreneurial discovery model
– Combining central measures suitable for the SE
• SESSS - NOT A PAPER BUT NETWORKING PROCESS
ACTIVATING DIFFERENT SS-STAKEHOLDERS
Action so far
• SE economic sectors overview done by Fac. of Econ.
• Involvement of larger urban centres of SE
– Personal contacts & two meetings
• Discussing possible collaboration with SE county
development departments and BAS
• Networking with most promising enterprise clusters
/ domains -> what are their R&D needs?
• Communication with ministries and central agencies
– involving key persons responsible for SS
application to the SESSS process
Further action with SESSS
• Combining central agencies SS-related measures to
meet bottom up initiatives
– Defining/selling SS Domains for the SE public
– Designing and choosing viable projects for a SS shopping
list“ acceptable for central agencies
• Building up South-Estonian institutional capacity based
on Tartu Science park & South-Estonian BAS-network
– Securing entrepreneurial discovery taking place in SE
• Involvement and linking SE enterprise (their unions)
with the SS shopping list as beneficiaries (owners)
– Agreeing on projects and enterprise side co-finance
• Public awareness rising via media
Results by the end of May (ideal)
• Representatives of South-Estonian key public
institutions and enterprise leaders have true
knowledge about the options provided by the
national SS-measures
• Agreement on the SESS domains achieved:
– Shortlist of SS/enterprise development related
projects to be developed agreed among stakeholders
• Input to the county (6) development plans
• Agreement with the Estonian Enterprise and
Development fund on the application of some SSmeasure by SE-based institutions
Comments about the SE domains
• Wooden houses: great growth rates but low R&D
• Food & milk sector: dominance of large multinational
firms not interested about local R&D
• Health/biotech sector: strong research capacity, very
different companies (by size and business models)
– Red biotech still science related and not business minded
– Green biotech has Dairy Competence Centre and several
patents developed during the last programming period
• ICT & electronics/mechatronics
– Software development - a quite number of globally
competitive firms
– Regional industrial software and elecronics still embryonic