Efforts to Implement Smart Specialization in Practice—Leading Unlike Horses to the Water

This paper reflects on the implementation of the RIS3 policy agenda. Based on two surveys and various phone interviews, it underlines that Europe's diverse pattern of institutional arrangements poses locally contingent policy challenges in which regional governance capacities are at least as important an issue as techno-economic potentials. In detail, it demonstrates how Southern Europe profited from novel practices while Eastern Europe had to invest substantially to change existing routines. Concluding, it argues that the main merit of RIS3 processes may, in fact, lie in their contribution to changing routines and practices of governance even if those, for now, remain without measurable effect on policy.