A growing body of both research and practice suggests that successful interactions between industry, government and higher education/research institutions is a crucial ingredient in promoting sustained regional economic development. Furthermore, this need for partnership, which involves real collaboration and co-operation, is essential to promote innovation and knowledge-based growth, with all key actors having a role to play. Research and higher education, for example, needs to push the boundaries of innovation and knowledge growth in a region, both through leading-edge research and world-class teaching, but in ways that respond to the innovation needs and capabilities of industry in the region. Industry, meanwhile, has to be better able to clearly and quickly articulate its need for innovation, and work with research/higher education so as to turn “knowledge” into goods and services that will succeed in the dynamic, fast-moving markets of today. Government, finally, needs to act as a catalyst, which boosts academic-industry links by providing a policy and support environment that promotes the generation of ideas and knowledge, facilitates co-operation and coherence, and better matches innovation demand and supply.

This conference, which is the fourth international conference hosted by the FP7-funded eDIGIREGION project, presents and debates a series of methodologies, frameworks and processes that have been used to develop these types of partnerships in the project’s four partner regions – South East Ireland (Ireland), Castilla-la Mancha (Spain), Central Hungary (Hungary) and Bucharest-Ilfov (Romania). In particular, it demonstrates how industry can work with both higher education and government to develop regional Joint Action Plans (JAPs) in digital technologies, which identify both the key digital “smart specialisations” in each region and the actions required to progress these specialist targets. Moreover, it also shows how regional stakeholders across all four regions have similarly worked together to develop an inter-regional JAP (iJAP), which nurtures a collaborative process of transnational sharing and exchange of knowledge in the digital domain.