Advanced technologies offer a way to guarantee future growth and success in today’s international marketplace. For smaller, rural centres this is more challenging because of a strong bias towards greater concentration in bigger cities, resulting in fewer opportunities for the small, rural centres in the Northern Periphery. Technology centres in the fields of advanced technologies need to be better prepared to face these new challenges, and to find new innovative solutions to guarantee competitiveness and future growth in sparsely populated areas. New innovative solutions and tools are therefore needed. The REN project aims to create new, innovative management practices in the field of advanced technologies and to develop new tools suitable for small communities in the Northern Periphery. The project will combine the know-how and expertise gained through technology development projects in the Northern Periphery Programme region and will allow the participating regions to develop new and innovative instruments in order to keep advanced technology expertise in the regions. The key to success in this area is the development of a knowledge based economy, which is based on an innovation system that links the various “nodes” in a chain involving business, financial, academic, infrastructure and human networks.