In the context of economic and financial crisis, budgetary and credit restrictions, the project aims to foster the development and competitiveness of traditional economic sectors in industrial territories with low innovation levels, unsatisfactory employment and high long-term unemployment rates, though presenting a high potential of innovation to bring growth, jobs and wealth.

The project is structured around the creation of the right environment to stimulate innovation and growth through territorial triple-helix and quadruple-helix cooperation based on regional and transnational cooperation ecosystem.

Its strategic goal is to favour and stimulate cooperation through design, implementation and consolidation of an innovation support network applied to traditional economic sectors, under territorial platforms and transnational networks of business and social cooperation for the exploitation of new ideas, creation of knowledge-intensive businesses and social enterprises, that generate economic wealth and jobs, thus fostering territorial competitiveness and smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

The project focus on traditional manufacturing industries (cork, habitat, moulds, polymers and composite materials, machinery and tools), allied with production, large spectrum and key enabling technologies, and the added value of soft innovation and expertise by culture, creativity, design and fashion applied to production of consumer goods.