Emma Shortis: Your card. OK, so hopefully my connection will cope with the recording and the PowerPoint at the same time. We'll see how we go.
And again welcome everybody. It's our pleasure to have you here online today. My name for those of you who haven't met me yet is Emma Shortis. I'm a lecturer in the European Union Centre of Excellence at RMIT University, along with my colleague Bruce Wilson, who many of you know, of course, and Professor Leo G, Who will hopefully be joining us shortly as well.
I would like to begin of course, by acknowledging the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon, Wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the university. I would also like to acknowledge that I today I am actually sitting on the lands of the Eastern Maine Gadget Mara peoples in South Western Victoria, and I respectfully acknowledge ancestors and elders, past and present, and the traditional custodians and their ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia and where we're all conducting our business. We're coming from a number of countries today, I know.
Many of you will have heard some of this presentation before in in various different forms by Bruce or I, so apologies if there is a little bit of overlap, but hopefully this provides you with I suppose a bit more context for the work that we are all doing and I suppose Full disclosure my version of this presentation is a little bit different to Bruce's oleos because I'm a historian by training, so I'm surprisingly I'm gonna start with a little bit of history because I think that gives you.
Well, hopefully that gives you a really nice bit of context, I suppose, for the for the values that really drive this process and where it came from. So I'm aiming to kind of give you that bigger picture, I suppose of smart specialisation. So many of you will know, I think that that what we now know as the European Union. I suppose was born really out of the ashes of the Second World War and modern Europe. Europe as we know it today was kind of born out of the idea that prosperity shared prosperity is a precondition for peace. So they're kind of driving project of the European Union or what we know is the European Union today is never again.
This idea that uncontrolled and uneven economic development is really disastrous for social cohesion, so that's the kind of foundational principle, I suppose, the foundational driver of the European Union, and that meant that the European Union was really focused partly on bridging that gap between prosperous urban centres, the big cities of Europe, and it's poorer regions.
So that was the kind of foundational principle, I suppose. But as Europe grew and it grew quite quickly, post Second World War, that gap between the rich so-called north of Europe and the increasingly left behind, so-called S, also grew. That gap grew so between the kind of prosperous nautic centres and, you know, areas of southern Italy or Southern Greece, that gap was getting increasingly, increasingly large.
But in Europe, I suppose in like some other centres that the problem wasn't that a lack of money, that was that was never a problem. The European Union's so-called cohesion budget. So it's kind of, I suppose, it's equivalent of a regional development budget is huge as enormous like eye watering amounts of money, I suppose, compared to what we're used to here in Australia.
So the question then arises, of course you know, why is this gap increasing? If there's so much money available to regional development and particularly regional infrastructure, why isn't that gap decreasing? Why aren't those kind of beautiful straight roads that the European Union was helping to fund in Portugal? Why wasn't that making a difference to regional lives? Why wasn't that reducing the gap between the north and the South and Europe to kind of go back to my earlier point was really aware of the implications of that?
Growing gap for so again for social cohesion, and you can draw a kind of fairly Direct Line between that gap between prosperous urban centres and really poor regions to political outcomes like Brexit or in places like the United States, to political outcomes like Trump. So you European Union is, I suppose, really deeply aware of the political and social consequences of this ongoing failure to reduce that gap.
And when you're asking this question of why is this happening, why is in an all this money kind of fixing that gap? Some of the reasons in in Europe were. You know, pretty obvious there's things like low level corruption in Europe. There's the German French dominance. Umm, of the European Union and its power structures that disadvantage poor regions and and really undermine confidence in the whole European project.
But there were also less obvious and and less kind of initially at least less clear and political reasons for that gap. In Europe, in the shadow, particularly of the global financial crisis in in 2000 and eight 2009 which hit Europe in a I suppose much, much harder in a much more disastrous way than it did ask here in Australia this question of why some regions were performing better than others, not just economically, but socially and environmentally as well. And particularly why some regions were better at surviving shocks like the global financial crisis.
This quiet these questions became even more urgent in 08 09 during that global financial crisis. But from azaleas, the 1990s research had begun to suggest that the answer to these questions about regional development could be found. In fact, in the regions themselves. And Europe slowly began to move away from a top down interventionist approach to regional development to this view that innovation and development must come from within, must come from within a region if that region is to benefit.
So European Union and OCD research found that innovative capacity within a region, so a region's ability and capacity to innovate was key to its resilience. So to its ability to survive those shocks and to communities ability to transition. So specifically, the strength of a regional innovation system, and that's a concept we'll come back to with critical to it, to a region's ability to, to prosper and to the survive shocks and to transition. And you can see on this map it will be a little bit too small, but again, happy to share. This is kind of I suppose mapping out the innovation and regional economic resilience across Europe. And you can see in that kind of almost traffic light.
Graphic those red, red or regions with low innovative capacity without functioning regional innovation systems are the ones that struggled to recover from the global financial crisis and that really significant economic shop shock.
So this is how this is where I suppose that the concept of smart specialisation comes from it. It emerged out of these questions and this research and it was really quickly adopted by the European Commission, which is kind of the, I guess, the bureaucracy of the European Union, the European Union is public service and smart specialisation as a concept was integrated into cohesion policy into European cohesion, cohesion policy, which is, you know, regional development policy.
And since 2014, European unions have been required, mandated to develop a smart specialisation strategy before they can even apply for European regional development funds. So this is a requirement now for regions in Europe and in the last European budget cycle from 2014 to 2020, that Regional Development Fund pull the Cohesion Fund pool was €80 billion, sorry again. It's like eye watering amounts of money, but €80 billion was made available to smart specialisation initiatives. So this process, smart specialisation is embedded in European regional development policy and has been for a long time.
So the question becomes of course, what is it? What is smart specialisation and again, many of you are familiar with the process of course, but some of you may not be, so I thought I'd kind of go through it step by step.
So smart specialisation is, is what we would call a pluralistic or a shared, lonely learning process. So there isn't really a specific manual. There's not really a kind of set of checkboxes that you can go through to say you've done smart specialisation in exactly the way it's meant to be done. It's a place driven process. It's a place specific process, but it's basic principles are that S3 process. So it's a smart process, it's evidence based.
And it's and it is and a knowledge based and evidence based process of understanding a region of deeply understanding a region and through that understanding through that fine grained granular understanding and analysis of what his inner region what is happening, what innovation processes are underway.
We come to the regional context analysis, many of which and many of you. I think your districts are in the process of this now and the regional context analysis brings together that evidence that data, both quantitative and qualitative, brings together that evidence to identify innovation opportunities. And that's where this specialisation comes in.
So specialisation means focusing on assets, focusing on economic and knowledge strengths and growth potential, which moves us into the entrepreneurial discovery process. And this concept of competitive advantage. And that's a really important concept. You know, I'm sure you've all come across the idea of competitive advantage and this is basically I suppose to put it crudely, it's saying that regional development.
And the smart specialisation process is evidence based, and it acknowledges that not every region you know can be the next Silicon Valley as much as they might want to. Not every region could be the next Airbus hub, for example, that innovation opportunities are based in what's happening in the region, the assets that already exist and they're building on that.
And then we come to strategy this this is about identifying a clear set of priorities based on that evidence, implementing and investing in them through the innovation working groups. And one of our districts, Orbost, is, is now up to that stage.
And I think it's important as well to just reflect on what we mean by innovation. It's a word that comes up so often, of course, in all of the work that we do and as I mentioned earlier, the fostering and supporting of regional innovation systems is a critical part of smart special agent Smiths Specialisation. But when we're talking about innovation, I think it's really important to emphasise that we're not.
Talking about just technological or scientific innovation, we're not just talking about that particularly American sense, I suppose, of individualized innovations. So it's not the kind of finding and finding out the one tech entrepreneur in, in our regions and kind of lifting them up individually.
Innovation as we see it and as understood in smart specialisation is collaborative problem solving, so technological innovation is of course important. It's a critical part and a critical form of innovation, but it's not the be all and end all. We're also talking about innovation in policy or innovation in governance.
I suppose that the kind of academic definition of that would could be socioecological innovation. So it's innovation really broadly understood. We can understand something like the Latrobe Valley Authority, which is a new kind of level and approach to governance in Victoria as an innovation in governance. We might also look to something like innovative changes in forest management in Victoria, including investigations into tenure, new and different experimental tenure arrangements.
As a kind of innovation, so this is inclusive and it's bottom up and it's driving this collaboration within our regions and within our districts. And part of that part of ensuring that that innovation is collaborative and inclusive and bottom up is something called the quadruple Helix. So again, pretty text heavy, but the quadruple Helix as understood in in smart specialisation is this kind of inclusive process of involving business, research and education institutions government at all levels and community. So it's bringing these four aspects together.
And in that way, smart specialisation can be really challenging because it does, it has a potential, at least I suppose, to disrupt local power structures. So again, to take a kind of crude example in southern Italy, for example, smart specialisation is a radically different process and disrupted the kind of old capture of government and public services by the mafia lazy in Italy. And so it is really challenging. Of course. That's a kind of extreme example, but it does in some ways it displaces the kind of usual voices in in regional development and ensure that our innovation and our processes are as inclusive as possible.
And that brings me again, I guess, to this concept of collaboration, which again is a word that comes up so much in in all of the work that we do. But I think it's really important to emphasise that that collaboration through the Smart Specialisation project process is really hard work. You know, it's not just necessarily consultation with community or business or research institutions. It's bringing all of those different elements together those different people together and building innovation systems and collaborative systems based on sustained, ongoing collaborative work. And that's really it's really difficult.
Again, I'm more than happy to share these slides and I suppose the point of this is to say that when these processes aren't in place when the quadruple Helix is not engaged, when we don't have this kind of support for building regional innovation systems that, that that is evidence based that is rigorously evidence based.
What we can end up with is a disconnected region. You know where the public sector is kind of doing its own thing with a lack of coherence between the levels of government, between local government, for example, and federal government, where there's a lack of sustained and engaged political leadership and the lack of it, a shared voice at the regional level. We've got the private sector doing its own thing.
Sometimes without coordination, without representation and motivated by kind of narrow self-interest of individualised businesses. And then we've got, you know, the tertiary education sector, which of course I'm part, which is again doing its own thing, kind of engaging with the federal government, but not necessarily other levels of government.
Which means we don't have, I suppose, a functional regional innovation system like the one that we're aiming for. When we have a connected region underpinned by the process of smart specialisation, we have something that looks quite different now, like again. Full disclosure, I'm a historians, always risky. You and a historian tries to visualize things that I've done my best here, where we have this connected region, where there is flow through around that quadruple Helix. Education, research, community, industry and business and public sector, and an acknowledgement that that those categories aren't fixed and people overlap them and move between them.
But at the centre we have those evidence based policies that support smart innovation and growth, so evidence based innovation, growth and growth that supports a sustained regional innovation system. So Bruce and Bruce, please do jump in at anytime if you have anything that you want to add. So this kind of essentially OK. Thanks very this. This is what this is kind of what we're aiming for I suppose through the smart specialisation process.
Bruce: I think going well.
Emma Shortis: Which I brings me, I guess away from Europe and and back to where we are in Australia where arguably I think kind of probably to generalize, we have disconnected regions. And that's really because historically regional development in Australia has been pretty disconnected. You know, I'm sure that you've all kind of experienced this in your day-to-day work. It has been fragmented and it's based largely on a system of competitive infrastructure grants, often motivated by disaster recovery.
And that's system of competitive grants will more often than not, I think put the organisations that you are all involved in in competition with each other.
For those limited pools of grant funding, rather than encouraging that kind of connection and collaboration that that we've just been speaking about and really all of these, all of the evidence that we have, not just from Europe but really from everywhere suggests that this approach, this disconnected approach where we have policy that's fragmented, we have advocacy that's fragmented across different organizations where we have a tertiary sector.
That is also disconnected and often working in competition. You know with each other and where the vast bulk of particularly federal research funding goes to urban universities. You know, despite the fact that we have 78 campuses across regional Victoria, all of the evidence suggests that this disconnected approach doesn't work. It doesn't work for regions. It doesn't create regional innovation systems, and it doesn't encourage it effective and sustainable regional development.
So that's kind of a broad brush. I suppose summary of a regional policy in Victoria, but umm, about five years ago now, an opportunity was seized in Victoria to do things a little bit differently, to take a risk and an opportunity, and that that grew out of, of course, many of you are deeply familiar with this and have been involved from the start, but that grew out of the closure of the Hazelwood plant in in Gippsland, where this purpose specific transition transition agency. The Latrobe Valley Authority was set up in order to support the transition from coal dependence in the Latrobe Valley. The LVA was established as many of you will know, I kind of immediately after the closure was announced to support Gippsland through this transition from this transition to coal dependence to whatever came next, and I think it's really important to say that this was deliberately vague. This idea of whatever came next for the Latrobe Valley and Gippsland more broadly was deliberately vague because the point was for community to decide based on evidence and based on collaboration.
And so this is where smart specialisation came in the Latrobe Valley Authority basically did an international scan looking for international best practice and settled upon smart specialisation on the I suppose, a policy experiment in Australia bringing smart specialisation. Umm, adapted to Australian circumstances into these country, really. For the first time. So this was a really exciting, I think exciting development and it and it highlights as well how smart specialisation in Australia has rolled out, of course very differently to how it did in Europe. And that's partly because the transition from coal dependence in Gippsland and of course forestry transition more broadly is clearly about more than just economic or industrial transition. It's also driven by climate change and questions of sustainability.
And that that is not how smart specialisation emerged, at least initially, in in Europe. And look at least partly because in Australia, as you know, Australian regions are increasingly suffering the worst effects and the worst risk, worst risk exposure when it comes to climate change. So again, in that sense, smart specialisation as it's evolved in Australia is set slightly apart from the way it has emerged in Europe, which is worth, it's worth mentioning that Europe is watching with great interest what happens in Victoria and taking a great deal of learning. So this isn't a case of a direct import of a policy into Australia. This is a really interesting. I think opportunity for policy expect experimentation and learning that that goes both ways.
In Europe, though, there is, I think a growing recognition that regional development is about more than just increasing GDP. It's more than just increasing economic output. It's about addressing, as I mentioned at the start, it's about addressing that inequality and fostering sustainability in in really the broadest possible sense of the word. So in Europe, Smart specialisation is kind of moving into another iteration. Umm S4. I suppose we could call it smarts sustainable spot smart specialisation strategies.
Or alternatively, it's been called partnerships for regional innovation, but I'll come back to that. But broadly speaking, in Europe, might specialisation is deeply linked to European climate policy and transition policy and that in the process really of bringing together smart specialisation and the European Green Deal.
So that's how I kind of the policy landscape, I suppose, and the processes are shifting in both Australia and in Europe. So far since then, since the establishment of the Latrobe Valley Authority, there's been the rollout of the Gippsland Smart specialisation process again. You know, many of you have been involved in this and again, this talk on a slightly different.
Process to the to the one that emerged in Europe, where the processing plan, the smart specialisation process was kind of loosely grouped into 4 sectors into food and fibre, energy, visitor economy and health and wellbeing.
We've rolled out together with Latrobe Valley Authority, our Business Innovation survey that was published I think in 2019, which was the first of its kind in Australia and provides a really interesting baseline I think for us to measure and evaluate the process. We're hopeful that that will be rolled out again in some form and I'm very happy to share the report.
With some of you, if you're interested, it's available online. As I mentioned, the process is kind of. Shifting from smart specialisation to smart specialisation for sustainability, that work is really again, it's resonating really strongly in in Europe. It's shifting theoretical framing in Europe and we're also working again already with some of you through 1 Gippsland in deploying this smart specialisation process to circular economy. Thank you, Claire can see Chloe's just popped in the Business Innovation survey. Thank you. And of course, we're also supporting the application of the smart specialisation process to forestry transition here in Vic.
So through Gippsland through their Gippsland smart specialisation process, I think we may have lost count Bruce, but we're up to something like 15 to 20 innovation working groups across those sectors, food and fibre energy and the visitor economy.
Bruce Wilson: That that's about right, yeah.
Emma Shortis: You need to have, right? You've been to 20. Sorry. There's a lot happening again. You know, many of you are involved in a across Gippsland.
Bruce Wilson: Yeah.
Emma Shortis: In August, which was the pilot town for Victorian forestry plan and Smart Specialisation, 5 innovation opportunities were identified through the regional context analysis, which has led to setting up innovation working groups for those innovation opportunities which are kind of rolling out now and at very different varying very exciting stages of development.
The towns of Noojee Yarram, Heyfield, Benalla, now Anala, Yarra Ranges, Morandini and Corryong are all in different phases of the regional context analysis, and I'll come back to that briefly to go into it more in more detail to other towns we'll be coming online soon.
So again, there's a lot happening and the exciting thing is watching the connectedness and the collaboration develop not just in those towns but across them. Livia got a question?
Livia Bonazzi: Yeah. Thanks. Just quickly to clarify, we have a Murrindindi the Township, but also Murrindindi Shire. So I wonder which Murrindindi you are referring to there because you're mentioning towns, we've got few towns. That impacted by the transition.
Emma Shortis: Yeah, that the Township.
Jeff M Svigos: The Township. Sorry if I can help out. The townships are Alexandra Taggerty, Buxton and Marysville so it works on a trail of where the impacted towns of forestry are. But you know, we use the Murrindindi term a bit loosely. We cover. I mean when we talk about the regional context analysis it's the region that the Community accept as.
Emma Shortis: Thanks Jeff.
Jeff M Svigos: As part of part of their town, but no benefit should not benefit that particular town, if that makes it makes sense.
Bruce Wilson: And just read something from me Livia. It's some sort of we talk about for district because we're interested in the fact the functional district that.
Jeff M Svigos: Yeah, that's true.
Bruce Wilson: Yeah, that's at work. And so as Jeff says, that's always a question that we actually work through with the people in, in the district as to where they see the boundaries of their district.
Emma Shortis: Thank you. And that I mean, in terms of the district, I think that kind of highlights how this process is and isn't just individualized projects, or necessarily even individualised townships. Those 15 to 20 innovation working groups, for example in in Gippsland, I are deeply connected and A and a focused on collaboration across the region across districts, so it's about not just about projects but about systemic change and as part of that the just to kind of add an example, the Latrobe Valley authority is in the process of reviewing.
The Gippsland Smart specialisation strategy against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, so there's a kind of another element I suppose of monitoring and evaluation and focus on that connectedness and sustainability and sustainability. I didn't want to focus too much on process specifically, but given that many of our places, towns and districts are in this phase in the regional context analysis Phase, I thought it was worth kind of just going into this in a little bit more detail.
So regional context analysis, as I said earlier, is about developing that fine grained evidence based understanding of the of the town, the district, the region, it's ecosystem and it's current key distinctive assets, whether they be kind of natural assets, knowledge assets or other kinds of assets. So sectors for potential growth and pointing through that to innovation opportunities to build on and support.
So there are some key stages in the regional context analysis. Again, this will play out differently depending on the place as a place based process, so it won't look the same in every place, but loosely I suppose it begins with a kind of data analysis. So using things like rent, plan, understanding of population, the spatial aspects of a place, it's economy, innovation that is happening, profiles, regional plans, kind of independent research.
We have stakeholder mapping across the quadruple Helix that I mentioned, so making sure that the Community as a whole has a voice and not just the usual suspects. And then. Part of that part of the qualitative data collection is umm, those interviews with key stakeholders, and I think it's probably important to emphasise here.
That it is that this isn't kind of consultation as we would normally understand it with community there have, there are often completely understandably concerns about, particularly in many of the communities that we work with.
There are concerns about consultation fatigue. You know that many communities feel as though they've been consulted to death, particularly in the aftermath of disaster. But I suppose to I assuage some of those concerns, this this isn't a standard process really, of just kind of community consultation. These interviews are in depth and deeply personalized. So many of you will know, of course, that project officers are engaging with stakeholders for an hour at absolute minimum, sometimes much longer than that.
In a very personal one to one way. And they're not just kind of doing an interview and then going away and forgetting about that person. They're not just consulting with somebody and then going away and kind of writing a policy and handing it back to them. This is an ongoing mobilisation process where community are engaged from the start and not just community, of course. But stakeholders are quite across the quadruple Helix who are engaged in the district and that quality of data through those interviews is then married up, tested against the quantitative data, and that's how we kind of develop and identify innovation opportunities. So this kind of use of evidence, this methodology is, is important and it's really unique to, to smart specialisation. And there are there are many, many resources available to project officers and their the architecture that supports them for this process including – that’s including Bruce and Leo and I. We are here to support the development of those regional context analysis and are in the process of doing that with many of the districts having a lot of discussions with.
Project officers in the town to develop these regional context analysis, which form the basis, I suppose of the smart specialisation.
Process in in your districts, towns and regions and help to mobilise energy as well, where community business and tertiary education and government are mobilized to support this process. So it's not just a kind of government LED project but a but a project embraced by an entire place. OK. In in that kind of practical sense, so we're here to support the regional context analysis, but much more broadly, we're engaged to support smart specialisation as the IT applies to, to forestry transition. And we do that in a number of ways. So you know, as I was just saying, direct support for things like the regional context analysis, but also through that collaboration that I was talking about earlier that kind of mutual learning process with Europe through connections to what's called the Joint Research Centre, which is the kind of platform I suppose that supports smart specialisation in Europe, where are deeply connected to that development of smart specialisation into S3 for sustainability or partnerships for regional innovation, Bruce's actually just got back from Europe last week, I think so.
There are deep relationships there and exchanges happening there. We also have the partnerships for regional innovation community of practice, which all of the PR's are involved in and which involves that kind of direct support that I was talking about, Bruce and Leo and I will go out and support PO's as they're doing interviews as they're collecting data. So, you know, a constant source of support as much as we can be.
We also have a weekly drop in session where the PO's just kind of come in, have a chat about how they're going. Any questions or concerns, roadblocks that they're facing and we work through them together and that's been a really I think, really exciting process where the PO's are coming together and finding and sharing their learning and sharing the what they're discovering how the processes are unfolding in their towns. We're finding lots of commonalities. And so that's been a really I think I hope at least helpful process for the PO's. We also have monthly workshops where we come together and again, do that check in. Have a much I suppose a more detailed discussion about where people are at and how we can support them, and we have, I suppose, then deep thematic dives not unlike the one that we're doing today into things like the regional context analysis or next actually Thursday for example, we're doing a deep somatic dive into how the regional context analysis is presented back to the community and sustains that mobilisation that I was talking about earlier in May. We're also holding a conference with practitioners from the Victorian working with the Victorian forestry plan, but also the Latrobe Valley Authority where again we're kind of sharing learnings and again gets kind of Fed back to Europe as well. And we have an ongoing exchange as well with other regions across Australia who are facing.
This kind of transition I've just been talking about western Victoria and what the process might look like there. So there's this kind of ongoing collaboration that sits alongside and it and it's deeply embedded in the collaborative process that is smart specialisation as well.
So that's a, I suppose the practicalities, but really to just kind of emphasize these key underlying principles of smart specialisation as it applies to the Victorian forestry plan and transition. But more broadly as well, and that is to build on Community strengths and capabilities for the future. I think often when we are talking about transition can be framed very negatively as something that's being imposed on a region that has no agency. And this I think flips that and focuses on strengths and opportunities for the future and it does that by leveraging that collaboration and innovation that's already in place and supporting it. It grows industry competitiveness, social cohesion and ecological sustainability. It sees those things as deeply connected.
Umm to each other rather than kind of separate pieces of work. So it's about that longer term strategic approach to regional development and connected with connectedness. So it's working with and for the Victorian community. It's not a top down imposition of policy.
And it is about that long term renewal. It's about positive transition for jobs and growth of course, but about future proofing about sustainable regional innovation systems that can withstand potential shocks and it is hopefully in, in doing that, reducing social and economic inequalities.
It's not easy. Of course, there aren't straight lines. As I said earlier, there's not a kind of specific checkbox manual that you can apply equally to every place. There aren't those kind of quick fixes. But what we do know?
From the evidence and from experiences so far in Europe and in Australia, is that that kind of working and collaborating in strategic ways can have really far ranging benefits for community and learning is the engine of all this. So Bruce calls this an iterative learning process and that's very much what it is. You know we're learning everyday from and with communities and across regional Victoria and that that knowledge development, that collective learning is again a kind of essential part of capability development and the development of regional innovation systems.
So I have spoken for far too long. I will, I'll leave it there for now and open up the floor to any questions follow up discussion that you might like to have and for Bruce of course to add anything or Jeff or Chloe and Chloe's back, yeah, I'll open the floor, but I'll just stop recording actually before I do that.
