Smart Europe in Todays World

With the twenty-first century bringing a completely new economic environment, the traditional way of economic growth shifted from the industrial concept towards knowledge-based economy. Skills, creativity, and knowledge as well as innovation capacity have become the significant aspects of economic activity. However, such transformation has created various problems and risks, putting regions into a position to review the management of their overall development. Against this background, the "smart model" increased in popularity in the policy area. This thesis outlines a summary of the smart concept and evaluates selected European NUTS2 regions based on the smart city approach. It discusses a focused overview of diverse definitions of the term smart city and its conceptual relatives in order to find out factors determining the performance of a successful smart area. The analysis exploits the most recent version of Eurostat and ESPON regional datasets to evaluate the smartness of selected 177 NUTS 2. Subsequently, the thesis offers a strategic division of selected NUTS 2 regions into three main categories; very smart, smart and less smart. The paper finds that the high concentration of R&D, high level of well-educated individuals, good focus on green regional economy and good global accessibility are among the main characteristics of the selected groups. The results show that out of 177 studied regions, 52 are categorized as very smart, 66 as smart regions and 59 as less smart regions. Additionally, the paper searches for the key factors determining the regional smartness. The findings explore that high level of innovation, good Internet accessibility, and high concentration of educated population together with good overall economic performance are among the most influential factors determining the regional smartness. Together the whole analysis creates a new view on the measurement of smartness in regional context.