PERIA is a co-operation project between Regional Innovation Agencies and Regional Authorities in Europe with the aims of: • sharing experience and methodologies on innovation services and policies• learning from each other in the management of regional innovation systems.PERIA focuses on regional innovation policy and on the tools used for implementing innovation: the Regional Innovation Agency (RIA)A Regional Innovation Agency is an organization in close cooperation and connection with the regional authority (government) with the following public assignments:- support the growth of enterprises through innovative projects,- develop an innovation-friendly environment, notably with operational partnerships with universities, research laboratories or technical centres,- improve the region's knowledge base, encourage the knowledge spreading,- develop and improve the region's innovation services and strengthen the region's innovation network.Whatever its official name, any organism with the above assignments will be considered as a Regional Innovation Agency (RIA).The objectives of PERIA are to develop within regions with a common interest their proficiency in regional innovation policy, in innovation management techniques and in fostering of Research-Development-Innovation relationships: - to meet and jointly identify practices of regional innovation support- to select good practices, especially those which impact positively on the SMEs innovation potential- experimentally transfer these practices to the Regional authority and RIA based on a feasibility study- and disseminate this knowledge of practices and transfer to other European Regional authority, RIAs and relevant actors in the field of innovation. This particularly to the regions that are currently in the process of developing their innovation policy through the implementation of specific regional tools such as RIA.Beyond these exchanges, the improvement of regional innovation policy and regional innovation support tools is the goal of PERIA in order to offer greater support to SMEs in developing their innovation projects. To achieve its objectives, PERIA will focus on the political level and on the operational level and ensure a connection between these two by having specific Working Groups that will in the second half of the project come together to work on the transfer of three selected good practices. Throughout the project, several events at regional, national and European level will be organised to familiarise innovation stakeholders and actors at these respective levels on this initiative and encourage the transfer of good practices inside and outside the partnership. Achievements: During the first year of PERIA, the partners contributed to the identification of services implemented in Regional authorities and Regional Innovation Agencies. Indicators have been defined for each service. This information helped in building the questionnaire to which each partner region answered. The analysis of the results of the questionnaire has led to the identification of 52 good practices. In the second year, the 52 identified practices have been described by each partner. And during a seminar dedicated to the practices, pairs of regions have been selected to exchange practices. Indeed, there were sufficient practices to realise an exchange in each pair.The methodology used in PERIA ensured a quality of practices based on a comparison with other methodology used in similar projects (mainly from Interreg IVC schemes). The pairs have started to implement the exchange based on study visit to deepen the understanding and practical aspect of the management of the practices. In terms of communication, the website is active and updated. Four newsletters have been published (among them one is in paper version). The PERIA Conference 2011 helped in identifying experts as well as practices of interest in regional innovation support services and disseminated the first results of the projects. A brochure has been published in English and translated versions are also available in national language.The last year of the project is dedicated to the exchange of practices and the preparation of sustainability activities (including final conference). The pairs of regions have worked on the following 8 practices: EXPANDE programme (supporting financially the creation of R&D department in SMEs), financial support for Young Innovative Enterprises, incubation process, international support services for companies, innovation vouchers including regional network organisation, support of companies growth with design, international cooperation visits, funding participation to trade fairs, cluster management services.These bilateral exchanges have been realised involving local and regional actors from the partner regions. The practices address among other topics financial engineering, innovation management, regional and international network development.The transfers requires time that is expected to go beyond the lifetime of PERIA (for example, the implementation of EXPANDE in Champagne-Ardenne requires to introduce a change in the management of European Structural Funds that can only be done in the next programming period 2014-2020). Nonetheless, actions have already been taken in order to introduce these new practices in each region.