The economic, technological and knowledge-based environment is changing rapidly. RTD policies, which link economic and innovation policies have to react quickly to these altering conditions and the changing needs of the enterprises. RTD policies must not be static but innovative and self-inventing; they must undergo a constant process of assessment and renewal and proactively anticipate upcoming challenges. RTD support measures, which at a time showed good stimulation effects, can loose their momentum due to the changing environment, novel and experimental support schemes may not have the desired effects and may need to be modified or even be discontinued.
Valuable experiences remain isolated and have not yet been made accessible for other regions. The aim of this project is to offer the participant regions a framework in which they can develop and test methodologies and tools in trans national partnership project aiming at the assessment of the impact of their RTD policies and allowing benchmarking of these policies.