Relatedness in the implementation of Smart Specialisation Strategy: a first empirical assessment

Smart Specialisation Strategy required regional authorities to identify technological domains where to concentrate investment in R&D and innovation. Their choices should originate from an analysis of regional strengths, aiming to identify those domains with the greatest potential for innovation and diversification. This paper aim to assess the degree of relatedness between chosen technological domains. We use patent data to categorize technological domains and the revealed associations methodology to measure their degree of relatedness. We find that the choices made by Italian regions show a significant higher relatedness as compared to a random choice, though with notable exceptions.