Regional business R&D expenditure within application sectors of the National Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialisation of the Czech Republic

The article aims at discovering the concentration of regional business research & development (R&D) expenditure on the areas related to specialisation domains defined within the regional annexes of the National RIS3 strategy. R&D expenditures in the period 2015–2018 are analysed, also taking into consideration changes between the observed period and the four-year period preceding the implementation of the RIS3 strategy (2011–2014). The share of specialisation areas in the total expenditures on business R&D in individual regions reflects differences in quantity and detail of specialisation domains identified within the regions. Absence or very low amounts allocated to some of the regional priority areas show that there is a possible need of rethinking the respective specialisation domains. Despite the growing concentration of expenditures on application sectors covering regional specialisation domains in the majority of Czech regions, the concentration of public expenditures on these sectors decreased in most of the regions. This development indicates that public R&D funding is not oriented to all of the identified regional specialisation domains to an extent corresponding with the importance of a domain for regional smart specialisation strategy. Results of the presented analysis may serve as an input for further modifications of regional specialisation domains