A Programme for Research & Innovation, Clusters and SME networks in the BSR. The objective of BSR Stars is to create a number of world-leading innovation hubs in the BSR by fostering R&I and business-driven transnational collaboration between companies, strong R&I milieus, clusters and SME networks, in order to strengthen economic growth in the whole BSR. BSR Stars will mobilize transnational cooperation between competences and actors in the BSR in order to successfully address some of the grand societal challenges with expected large global market potentials. BSR Stars will, together with the ‘Demola’ network, develop a common open platform where students and universities can develop new products and services together with companies. The platform will be an enabler for novel cross-border university-business cooperation to create real solutions to existing problems and challenges in the BSR. BSR Stars will establish ‘a new BSR brand’, building on ‘smartness’, research, innovation and cooperation, leading to capacity building, stronger international competitiveness, increase in foreign investments and world-class players in some strategic areas. The successively improve BSR competitiveness and innovation through transnational cooperation requires mobilising and aligning funding from European, national and regional programmes. The BSR Stars programme will also include the development of a ‘Baltic Sea Region’ method for better exploiting the potential of innovative SMEs by connecting SME networks (mainly) initiated at local/regional levels. An additional objective is to ‘develop a regional foresight programme’, which will help identify desirable directions of cooperation in R&D and innovation. BSR Stars will, in cooperation with the Nordic Council of Ministers, initiate ‘BSR Innovation Express’ – a joint call to improve the internationalisation of clusters and the SME network. This will enable cluster organisations and companies to access support for networking, business match-making and market research activities etc. . Achievements: On the 6-7 of November 2013, the BSR conference “Get smarter together in the Baltic Sea Region” was held in Malmö, Sweden. On the first day, achievements of the interregional and transnational cooperation of the last years was shared. Results of StarDust, the first implementation milestone of BSR Stars was presented, and the experience on how to establish international innovation platforms was discussed. On the second day, concrete opportunities were offered to find synergies with other regions in the Baltic Sea Region and match with interesting partner regions to achieve something that you cannot do on your own. To increase the chances of matchmaking between actors the day was structured in two thematically focused sessions, e-Health and Smart Cities, but also a third, open session for any other theme of your choice. Main target groups were regional governments together with stakeholders involved in the governance of the Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3) with an interest in Baltic Sea Region Cooperation.