| Zusammenfassung: | The development of a smart specialisation strategy has been introduced as an ex-ante conditionality for the allocation of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) dedicated to strengthening research, technological development, and innovation, in the programming period 2014-2020. In the period 2021-2027, an explicit emphasis is placed on developing skills for smart specialisation, industrial transition, entrepreneurship, and adaptability of enterprises to change. To support 2021-2027 programming, this analysis has explored ERDF projects relevant to Higher Education for Smart Specialisation (HESS) in the past. In particular, a keyword string search methodology was applied to the ERDF Beneficiaries 2014-2020 dataset created by WIFO on behalf of JRC to identify HESS-relevant projects. Based on the joint occurrence of pre-defined keywords concerning the smart specialisation process and human capital development, 45,057 ERDF projects were identified as relevant to HESS. In addition to the evaluation of keyword occurrence and combinations, detailed exploratory analyses concerning the projects' thematic intervention fields and the special role of Higher Education Institutions among beneficiaries were conducted to provide more information on the nature of HESS-relevant projects. Significant differences were identified between countries, also in terms of first, the number of HESS relevant projects, and second, the share of ERDF funding allocations towards HESS-relevant projects by country, taking values between 2.4 percent and 47.5 percent.
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