Putting Digital Innovation Hubs into Regional Context

While digitalisation is oftentimes thought of as a global megatrend and something that transcends national borders and geographical distances, it is at the same time a very tangible process exhibiting considerable regional and sectoral variation. Against this backdrop, Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) (a policy initiative in the context of the Digitising European Industry (DEI) strategy of the EU) constitute an important complementary and regionally anchored policy, whose impact can be boosted if combined with other EU-wide innovation supporting initiatives (i.e. regional/national innovation strategies). After three years of the launch and successful deployment of the DIHs initiative, a survey has been conducted among DIH managers and regional policy managers working with Smart Specialisation Strategies all over the EU28. The survey provided a useful insight of the digital maturity level of the regional contexts in which DIHs operate and what role they have undertaken in their respective regions, as well as the DIHs' characteristics and activities in their regional context and other important aspects such as collaboration, strategies and funding. This report consists of a thorough analysis of the collected answers. Delivered together with a case study analysis of six (6) regional DIHs in different socio-economic contexts (separate report), they aim at providing useful evidence on current strengths, weaknesses and variations of DIHs also in view of the planning for the upcoming Digital Europe Programme (DEP) and its funding priorities.JRC.B.3-Territorial Developmen