• Project Leader: Ranald Richardson
• Staff: James Cornford
• Sponsors: EU: VI Framework Programme
• Partners: CURDS; empirica (project leaders); eris@, the European Regional Information Society Association; CARPAT; IRISI

To date most work on benchmarking ICT in Europe has concentrated on the relative prevalence of individual technologies in nation states. Given the complex substitution opportunities ICT offers, this offers little insight into developments of far greater importance: the transformational impact of ICT on economy and society. It also ignores the fact that ICT impacts and innovation are best observed at regional not national level. Thirdly, the role of regional culture in influencing the success (or lack thereof) of knowledge society related policies in a given regional setting appears to have been overlooked all too often