Good practice:

The ecosystem approach

To be able to address different political initiatives for cultivation of development and integration in the Global Value Chains (GVC), a method of value chain identification and development is necessary. In 2018 Ministry of Economics started a pilot project “Strategic ecosystem development” (by using ecosystem approach) with the aim of the project to strengthen the collaboration between organizations (triple helix), to cultivate the development of ecosystem in particular sector, by increasing the innovations, improving the infrastructure and legislation, thus raising the potential of specific ecosystems integration in the GVC, in the leading European innovation consortiums and attract public/private investment. Ministry of Economics has identified 3 value chains for “Strategic ecosystem development” pilot project (biomedicine, smart cities and smart materials).
The method used in this pilot project consists of 8 steps, which lead to strategic development of ecosystem. This method does not provide all ecosystem with the same rate of development but using constructive self-analysis it allows organizations to determine their competitive advantages and identify directions of future development. Within this pilot project three ecosystems where mapped which allowed to identify the key players and allowed to develop workshops where key players from academia, public and private sector took part to identify specific ecosystem’s development potential and possibilities to collaborate.

Currently the resources required has formed about EUR 100.000 including the necessary labor expenses, organisation of stakeholder mapping through meetings, hackathons for solution development to be addressed within the ecosystem and conferences for educational and networking purposes.

Ecosystem approach has proved itself as a great instrument to develop cooperation between all triple-helix players to establish united long-term vision in one particular sector. Ministry of Economics has identified 3 value chains for “Strategic ecosystem development” pilot project (biomedicine, smart cities and smart materials). For example, within the scope of Smart cities ecosystem a stakeholder association "VEFRESH" was formed to test unified smart solutions for smart cities.

Each region or country has its own areas of strength provided by academia, industry and public sector. Ecosystems are a way of bringing together all the specific stakeholders to form a cross-sectoral cooperation platform with all the specific are strengths a country might have. From a foreign direct investment or any type of interest perspective it is a unified platform of stakeholders, that might also be placed within a certain area, which can be displayed from all the Triple helix perspective showing involvement of the industry, academia and public sector. From an Employment and student`s perspective, it shows the priorities and further development options from finishing studies or researches, to being able to work within the certain ecosystem.