Over the past decade the European Commission* and other key policy bodies, such as the OECD and many national governments, have come to believe that the global economy is increasingly a knowledge-based one.

Since competitive success depends on the ability to produce knowledge and utilize it effectively, there is a pressing need for communities, regions and nations to invest a greater share of resources in education and training than they have in the past. However, it may be more appropriate to describe the emerging paradigm as that of a “learning economy” rather than a “knowledge based” one. The production paradigm of this “new economy” is highly dependent on localized, or regionally based, sources of knowledge and learning. Given the social dimension of learning to allow frequent interaction and the easy, effective exchange of information, innovative capabilities are sustained through regional communities that share a common knowledge base and can contribute to the kind of tacit knowledge and the capacity for learning that support innovation.

As already mentioned, this proposal builds on and intends to extend, both in aims and regional partnerships, an existing (Bayern, Andalusia and Wales) collaboration framework among Regional Administrations (developed in ADAPT and ADAPT bis). This collaboration framework demonstrated to be a particularly successful scheme to generate the synergies that support innovation and the emergence of sustainable regional strategies. This proposal intends to support this successful experience extending it to other Regional networks that have expressed their deep concern to enhance the innovation capacity and their special interest in collaborating: Poitou-Charantes, Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto, Yorkshire, Athens and Brasov