Although highly successful in many important sectors, European manufacturing businesses based on many SMEs will continue to suffer strong competition from countries such as India and China. To prosper in the long run, European companies need to develop new business strategies which combine innovation, research and technology, a highly skilled workforce and their overall operational effectiveness in ways which competitors find hard to copy. SMART FRAME will establish a dynamic network between project partners providing a framework supporting these goals. The core aim of the project SMART FRAME is to sustainably improve the regional innovative framework in CENTRAL EUROPE by elaborating and distributing know-how in the fields of intermediary support, R&D co-operations, settlement and spin-offs. The challenge is bringing together the two worlds of innovation and technology institutes and creates a fruitful environment for entrepreneurship to be monitored by hard output facts.First research has shown a number of problems arising in the main action fields regional intermediary institutions which are engaged in linking science and funded R&D results to industry and academic educational institutions: an unsatisfying number of high-tech spin-offs, under-usage of potentials for settlement of high-tech SMEs in the region, deficits in international scientific cooperations and lack of interconnectivity with other international actors based on common projects.In overcoming these challenges the project will bring together and distribute existing know-how, which is only transnationally available and elaborate new know-how based on several pilot actions and their evaluation. The project will focus on the most promising modern industrial technologies: (1) materials, (2) surfaces, (3) technology orientated processes, (4) sensor-actors and (5) integration of these technologies into products and production. Achievements: The CENTRAL EUROPE project SMART FRAME aims at the strengthening of the project partners, SMEs and the regions they are operating in in terms of R&D cooperation, company settlement and spin-offs. In November 2011, the project fired the starting pistol for an array of workshops with the clearly formulated goal to bring experts in the modern industrial technologies together in order to evoke common projects. Another batch of these workshops was conducted in the following months with over 270 participants from all project parter regions. In these events over 120 project ideas and possible cooperations have been identified which lead to a sustainable network of the project partners' networks. As the SMART FRAME project also aims at the improvement of the project partner sites, a SWOT analysis, showing the strengths and weaknesses of the project partners and their region was conducted and finished. Consequently, common activities to iron out common weaknesses and to improve common strenghts have been identified and scheduled for implementation. Another core aspect of the project, the settlement of companies around the project partner sites, was significantly pushed forward, as the project elaborated a strategy on how to attract companies as well as a marketing package, showing which channels to be chosen for this. This is the basis for the next steps, the approaching of companies to convince them to settle down. Promising meetings with companies took place already. To identify further candidates for settlement, the project partners started to approach suitable companies in order to promote their regions. In order to develop the project partner sites to successfully support spin-off activities, an innovative spin-off model, showing a win-win situation for managers and founders has been elaborated Significant input resulting from international best practices, a questionnaire used by all project partners and a tailored SWOT analysis aiming at the situation at the project partner sites is the basis for this model. Based on the model, handbooks aiming at sharing the model's aspects to the target groups have been created and tailored to all project partner sites' regional specifics. Overall, the project SMART FRAME made the next steps in order to complete its ambitious goals and to support business in Central Europe.