The concept of endogenous development assumes the use of specifi c resources of the region, difficult to copy, to its development, and even to gain a competitive advantage in a wider dimension. This concept has been used in the provisions of the Regional Innovation Strategy of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship for 2014-2020 for smart specialization (RIS3), especially in relation to leading smart specialization the quality of life, in the areas of: production and processing of ecological, regional and traditional food; renewable energy and distributed energy; agrotourism and ecotourism. It was targeted at the development of the entire region, not only the leading urban centers. The special role of the food economy lies in the need to guarantee food security and food sovereignty in the region. This issue is of strategic importance.

In the 2014–2020 programming period, two new tools were introduced by the EU cohesion policy, namely Smart Specialisation (SS) and Integrated Territorial Investments (ITI). Their implementation aims at contributing on the one hand to activating and strengthening endogenic potentials, including those based on knowledge and innovation, and on the other hand to territorialisation of intervention for the purpose of obtaining competitive advantages or regions. The tools are based on two concepts of the development policy: smart specialisation and place-based and territorial approach to development. The article presents the rationale and prospective impact of the implementation of the tools on development programming of selected regions of Poland. Detailed analyses cover the provisions of the ITI Strategy of the Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) of Poznań (Wielkopolskie Voivodeship), Subregion Centralny (Śląskie Voivodeship), and Lublin (Lubelskie Voivodeship), as well as regional and national operational programmes in terms of potential contribution of the implementation of ITI to the strengthening of regional SS in some of the Polish region. The analyses performed for the three groups of Thematic Objectives (TO) of ESIF 2014–2020 (corresponding with 3 pillars of the Europe 2020 Strategy), i.e. ‘smart’ – TO 1–3; ‘sustainable’ – TO 4–7; and ‘inclusive’ – TO 8–10, show that the ‘sustainable’ group (in majority represented by companies from sections F, H) refers to infrastructure projects, often of a transport network; the ‘inclusive’ group is ascribed to companies from sections Q and P to generally ‘soft’ projects related to the development of social services, and ’smart‘ is related to sections M, F, J. Only in the case of 8% of projects (out of 78 analysed) it was stipulated that preferences would be given to the existing or newly established companies the profile of activity of which corresponds to regional SS. Such projects deal with the support for companies in the scope of business incubators and expansion of vocational education infrastructure in terms of adjustment to the needs of key sectors selected in RIS3 strategies of particular regions. In all of the analysed FUAs, ITI measures support regional SS in the framework of TO 3 and TO 10. The projects will be primarily implemented by companies from PCA sections M, F and P. The proposed methodology gives prospects to the analysis of future impact of interventions on the growth of the smart specialisation potential of the analysed FUAs PC.

Despite significant changes of a political, legal and economic nature, despite clearly expressed intentions, the natural environment of most areas of Europe is further degraded. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt effective solutions, and one of the possibilities of determining the directions of support is the pro-ecological nature of the regional innovation strategy, which will allow transfer of much larger funds to support eco-innovation. The work is a case study. The aim of the research presented in this work is to show the relationship between the provisions of the Regional Innovation Strategy of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship for 2014-2020 for intelligent specialization (RIS3), and the assumptions of the five-helix concept, and the justifi cation for its use in future, in the form of a developed regional eco-innovation strategy.