Working Paper Series on Transforming Territories

This JRC Working Paper Series collects scientific contributions with high policy relevance specifically contributing to a better understanding of place-based transformative innovation. 

This Transforming Territories series aims to bring new perspectives to both the design and implementation of approaches for systems change and the role of places, and point out their relevance for the European policy agenda of prosperity, security and democracy, with a particular focus on competitiveness in the twin transition.

Territories are strongly and variably affected by a range of challenges and transitions. They have the option to transform themselves or be transformed. Better understanding how territories and their actors can take a lead in choosing and implementing systemic changes that allow them to benefit fully from ongoing transitions is at the heart of this Working Paper Series. More concretely, examples of contributions with relevance for EU competitiveness can include:

• Governance and orchestration of systems change for territorial transformation, including synergies between policies, funding and financing instruments, through horizontal coordination, multilevel governance, and inter-territorial collaboration.
• Approaches to facilitate stakeholder engagement in design and implementation of place-based transformation; Open Discovery Processes; systems changes in places as seen from the perspective of different actors, e.g. universities and education providers, industrial actors, social and cultural actors, citizens, etc.
• Territory-specific approaches, including more and less innovative territories, with diverging degrees of political representation, regional vs urban vs rural approaches, or varying territorial impacts of transitions depending on local characteristics.
• Thematic contributions on territorial systems change, e.g. related to European industrial ecosystems, to the priorities of the New European Innovation Agenda, Strategic Autonomy, specific policy priorities and societal challenges such as climate resilience.
• Approaches for translating societal challenges into territorial opportunities, for envisioning and prioritising, and for designing and implementing strategies for systems change, e.g. through local missions.
• Lessons from experimentation, approaches and practices for measuring, monitoring and evaluating territorial systems change, qualitatively and quantitatively.
• Enablers of systems change, including trust building, skills, awareness and ownership, territorial leadership.

JRC Working Papers mainly address policy analysts and the academic community. They are science-based manuscripts, which hold policy relevant information, highlighting possible policy implications, and proper scientific publications, which are typically issued at the moment they are submitted to peer-reviewed scientific journals. The working papers are useful to communicate to a broad audience the preliminary research / analytical findings of the work we develop, to generate discussion and to attract critical comments for further improvements. The working papers are considered works in progress and are subject to revision.

The paper series started autumn 2024 and targets around 10 papers annually.