The Definition stage starts with setting up the network of participating regions and defining directives and conditions for network activities.  A powerful management structure is established for planning, execution and control of the project development process.  Therefore, a strong project organisation reflects the regional structure for every partner as well as a trans-regional structure with transnational support entities.  On beforehand a new enlarged view on the “innovation system with firms at the core” is defined.  The scope is defined in terms of impact assessment areas and categories.  Consensus building mechanisms are put in place for getting unanimous agreement on pre-defined issues.

Appropriate measures are taken to make innovation actors in the region aware of the project.  The platform is built to strengthen the transnational dimension of the project.  This promotes inter-regional cooperation and encourages interaction between regions by exchange of experience and transfer of good practise.  A learning forum is created.

Early involvement of policy-makers and regional authorities will facilitate policy benchmarking and formulating policy-recommendations to stimulate successful measures and actions for good practise.

The scope defined in terms of impact assessment areas and underlying categories as mentioned in the Definition stage will set the context for the indicator set.  Validation results in a useful indicator set for a workable impact assessment system.

This validated set of common indicators is elaborated into determinants for every impact category.  These determinants are analysed into a representative set of relevant parameters.  Screening mechanism for evaluating indicators, scoring mechanism for translating into ratings, ranking mechanism for comparing relative importance and aggregation mechanism are worked-out.

The indicator fiche is the result.  A specific set of indicator for RIS/RITTS-processes will be included.

Analytical instruments are designed, developed and build.  The local performance evaluation scan gives the baseline for every region representing the current status.  Impact assessment scan of performed RIS/RITTS within the partner regions involved, is included.  The regional self-assessment tool will indicate strong areas to identify as good practise and weak areas subject for improvement.  The inter-regional benchmarking instrument allows comparison amongst participating regions.

Before benchmarking and figuring out underlying reasons for diversity in performance, a context setting is the beginning of the Implementation and Analysis stage.  Contextual analysis (regional fiches), identification of firms’ needs (case studies) and supply-side analysis (nature of support services provided) will set the regional framework.  This allows to put findings in the right context considering environmental factors peculiar to the region, differentiated needs of the regional target group and the specific situation of innovation support systems and infrastructure in that region.  A categorization of regions is made up.

Supplementary data on the indicator set are gathered by desk research and field work to complete the format of the input fiche.

Comparative picture of RIS/RITTS is included based on historic and current data stemming from the analysis phase of the RIS/RITTS-project.

The instrument is run by processing the data resulting in a radar diagram showing the performance of every indicator.

Cross-regional rating is organised to avoid the lack of objectivity when a region is scoring itself.  At the same time this will involve partners from one region into the ratings of another one.
The findings will also identify and document long-term effects of the RIS/RITTS-processes.
Testing, debugging and improving the userfriendliness of the analytical instruments are carried out.
The indicator set is reviewed and modified wherever the practical experience demonstrates that this is necessary.

Based on the outcome of tool execution and gathered information, conclusions on the regional situation and performance are drawn with respect to strong and weak areas and identification of successful policies and good practise.  A policy recommendation strategy and dissemination plan are set up to prepare the regional deployment.

Dissemination activities are organised to take a run in establishing a learning forum and raising awareness of policy-makers and regional authorities.
Policy recommendations will incorporate clearly defined actions and measures.

Rollout of the benchmarking instruments to every region allows comparison amongst the region of the innovation performance on the basis of the chosen indicator.

This will enhance competition between the regions in the field of regional innovation policy.  Inter-regional comparison goes along with an explanatory analysis to find out the underlying reasons of differences and diversity in performance in order to identify successful policy measure and good practise considering the regional contextual analysis.  Inter-regional deployment starts with exchange of experiences and results in order to build consensus.  The benchmarking dimension will thus enhance cross-fertilisation, mutual learning, concrete policy recommendations incorporating clearly defined actions and measures for transfer of successful policy and best practise.

Dissemination on a large scale at trans-regional level and regional dissemination activities will foster the spread-out of good practises which may lead to new innovation supporting measures introduced in the region.

Finally, the methodology is transformed into a generic framework and tools are standardised based on a general applicable indicator set in such a way that dissemination is possible throughout the European regions.  The user manual is written and a transnational educational workshop will be organized as dissemination activity.  Consequently, the benchmarking part of the project constitutes the basis for a larger European innovation policy benchmarking exercise building on a strong bottom-up momentum.