The Role of University in the Smart Specialization Strategy: Exploring How University–Industry Interactions Change in Different Technological Domains

The smart specialization strategy (S3) introduces a new “policy-prioritization logic” according to which regional strategies should target interventions in those research and innovation domains in which the region has a competitive advantage. In other words, the adoption of an S3 strategy has shifted the regional innovation strategies’ focus from privileging exclusively high-tech sectors to including also those lower tech domains that are recognized as a source of regional competitive advantage. As a consequence, this shift calls for a rethinking of university–industry relationships for innovation, which have traditionally privileged high-tech sectors. In this light, this article aims to analyze how the introduction of the S3 has changed the role of universities by comparing patterns of academic engagement with local entrepreneurs in both low-tech and high-tech domains. To this purpose, we conduct an empirical study in the Region of Campania (South of Italy) to analyze differences in terms of university–industry channels and motivations in different S3 technological domains.