© SYMPHONYA Emerging Issues in Management, n. 1, 2015 symphonya.unimib.it Edited by: ISTEI – University of Milan-Bicocca ISSN: 1593-0319 del Castillo Jaime, Paton Jonatan, Barroeta Belen (2015) Smart Specialisation for Economic Change: The Case of Spain, Symphonya. Emerging Issues in Management (symphonya.unimib.it), n. 1, pp. 30 – 43. http://dx.doi.org/10.4468/2015.1.04delcastillo.paton.barroeta 30 Smart Specialisation for Economic Change: The Case of Spain Jaime del Castillo * , Jonatan Paton ** , Belen Barroeta *** Abstract Smart specialisation concept acquired a remarkable importance in the current regional policy as a model to understand the role of territories in international competitiveness. In fact, the definition of Smart Specialisation Strategies (RIS3) has become an ex ante conditionality for European regional policy in the period 2014- 2020. Although the process of definition has been a good opportunity to rethink and improve the policymaking, it has not been out of difficulties and barriers since it is not always easy to translate academic concepts to real policies in the field. These difficulties are analysed from a threefold perspective: the definition, implementation and evaluation of RIS3. These three aspects are seen in the recently finished Spanish RIS3, with specific attention to: priority setting, policy instruments, and evaluation. Keywords: Smart Specialisation; Smart Specialisation Strategies; RIS3 in Spain; Global Competition; Global Markets 1. The Research Questions Recently a territorial development model has arisen focused on territorial search of specialized diversification. This model, known as smart specialization, is achieving remarkable relevance in the current postulates of European Regional Policy to the point of becoming, through the development of a strategy for smart specialization, an ex-ante condition for the Structural Funds in 2014-2020. In this context, European regions carried out a process of definition of these strategies that ended recently with the beginning of the new programming period. These processes accounted for a number of difficulties and limitations that will inevitably determine the success of the implementation stage. The objective of this paper is to analyse these risks and assess the starting point of the implementation stage of the Regional Innovation Smart Specialisation * Full Professor of Applied Economics, University of Basque Country (infyde@infyde.eu) ** PhD Researcher, INFYDE (jonatanpaton@infyde.eu) *** CEO, INFYDE (belenbarroeta@infyde.eu)