Smart development as a criss-crossed outcome of smart specialization and smart city strategies

As argued in Chapter I.2.3., the capability of a region of taking stock of its historical production path in trying to adapt to future trends heavily depends on two crucial steps. The second step refers to the ability of the different levels of government involved to take fully into consideration the real nature and characteristics of the goods and services playing a crucial role in the transformation paths pursued. This can become a substantial drive for change and enhance their competences in managing local development. The first one, on which we will focus in this chapter, concerns the capacity of the different levels of government involved to run after and exploit the synergies between the two different strategies of governance we are concerned with in this part of the volume: the smart specialization strategy (S3), on the one side, and the smart city strategy (SCS), on the other. In Part III we shall see that since non pure private goods are at the core of the transformation paths and given the fact that markets are efficient allocation mechanisms only for private goods, for a relevant part of the economy a coordination mechanisms of a different sort is strongly needed. We will argue there that these can be implemented through the creation of “smart communities” which can make available two sorts of tools relevant for the overall equilibrium. On the one side, they can elaborate rules capable of attributing economic values to production processes and supply of goods and services with a social nature. These rules helps in regulating the system and ensuring its compliance. This leads to tackle the structure of value chains for social goods. On the other, smart communities can help in adapting the very objectives of individuals, households and organizations to the constraints posed by social values on the subjective behaviour in the consumption of private goods. This leads to modify the structure of value chains also for private goods. In this way another source of synergy can be derived bridging the joint lessons coming from the study of smart development and smart communities. But, in the present chapter we are still focusing on the first source of synergy and, in order to set up our analysis in a more explicit way, it is better to state the plan of our presentation. First, the reasons for which it can be relevant to explore these strategies will be presented. Afterwards, the key research questions that is important to answer will be raised. In third place, the linkages between S3 and SCS leading to smart development as a synergic outcome will be discussed. In the conclusions the main results achieved are summed up, giving particular emphasis on the economic impact of development based on smart specialization and smart city.