From May 16^th –to 20^th, a study visit to Austria was conducted in the scope of support provided by HERAS Plus for the Smart Specialization Strategy (S3). The delegation consisted of members of the National Team in charge of developing the S3 and HERAS Plus project team (including consortium partners).

The primary objective of the study visit was to inform Kosovo’s Smart Specialization development process on how academia and especially the universities can be best addressed with S3 policy mixes to leverage the investments and achieve S3 objectives. The study visit was designed to enable learning for the Kosovo delegation from Austrian institutions’ best practices, particularly the universities, agencies, and government actors.

Site visits and presentations were attended at: University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna – BOKU: BASE; Christian Doppler Forschungsgesellschaft; Austrian Research Promotion Agency, FFG (Basisprograms, Program BRIDGE, Innovation voucher, Competence program COMET); University Wiener Neustadt and the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research.

The visit enabled the delegation to explore what type of institutional capacities can be further strengthened to facilitate the active role of HEIs within the quadruple helix, considering the increasingly important interplay of government, academia, business, and civil society. New policy delivery approaches, and the streamlining of evidence-based policy approaches, were considered needed to meet this demand must, and further insights on how to trace and understand the results (or impact) of strategic approaches are needed.

Insights and lessons learned will be utilized inform further actions, and activities.