Innovation is regarded as an important success factor for regions in their striving for economic competitiveness. Successful regional innovation systems involve many different players in networks and enable them to easily access information. Geographical proximity is still an important aspect of an innovation system, since especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) depend, to a high degree, on the access to research results within their immediate vicinity. Both SMEs and institutional players can gain competitive advantage by using potentials of their neighbours. Well established institutional networks across borders, easy flow of information between players and cooperation between official bodies contribute to successful regions in the wider European context. Bearing this in mind, it is astonishing that almost 20 years after the fall of the iron curtain, 15 years after EU-accession of Austria and 5 years of Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, this transnational region still suffers from insufficient connectivity in the field of research, technology and innovation. Enterprises are already taking advantage of business opportunities in the other countries but to a little extent of research results and technology offers right across the border. There are few effective institutional networks between RTI-players established. In general, it can be stated that the regions do not sufficiently use the cooperation potential between its regional RTI systems, especially considering the high proportion of SMEs and the high number of universities (36 universities and estimated 1000 research institutes in the cities of Brno, Bratislava, Trnava, Györ and Vienna Region). In the field of innovation the involved regions are facing different weaknesses but share one common issue: the insufficient connectivity of regional RTI systems. The project directly addresses this area of weakness. Therefore this project focuses on the establishment of transnational RTI tools and helping the projects` regions to grow together, namely in the field of research, technology and innovation. This shall be reached by the active involvement of all key players in this geographical area. Achievements: The CENTRAL EUROPE project centrope_tt aims at supporting the growing together of the innovation systems of the Centrope region (Lower Austria, Vienna, Burgenland, South Moravia, West Slovakia, West Hungary). The project shall in particular develop and test transnational innovation support tools and related communication structures. Hereby Research & Development (R&D) activities in the region shall be made more easily accessible for enterprises respectively shall intermediary organisations strengthen their transnational cooperation. Most relevant activities of the project are the development of a database with a collection of more than 1.500 profiles of R&D providers, the conduction of a training course on the support of transnational innovation activities as well as the innovation voucher, a cheque which enables enterprises to buy services of R&D institutions from other parts of the Centrope region. In particular the following outputs have been achieved so far: elaboration of Social Network Analysis (SNA) based on the database with the display of research relations between R&D institutes (benefit: results of SNA have already been used for discussion of strategic options in Advisory Board meetings related to the future of the Centrope region), conduction of first round of training cycle (centrope_tt Academy) on transnational innovation support with four 2-day workshops in each of the participating Centrope countries (benefit: persons trained in transnational cooperation in the field of research, technology and innovation and establishment of network among them) and the implementation of more than 30 cooperation projects (vouchers) between companies and R&D institutions (benefit: test of pilot scheme for transnational voucher scheme in particular concerning administrative challenges as well as related to the content of the voucher-projects).