It is hard to find a country in the western world where the political driven strive for prosperity is not based on efforts to establish regional strategies "driven by knowledge" and "research driven clusters". In Norway a concerted effort is being made to take advantage of the EU's Regions of Knowledge initiative under the Seventh Framework Programme, the new Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme, and the structural fund. Propelled by funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Regional Developement and wheeled by The Norwegian Research Council's "strategic role" key worlds for achieving most needed financial support for regional research are "strategic use of R&D", "establishing clusters", "trippel helix", "competing on the global marketplace"- or more recently "sparkling points", "hotspots" and - if up to date - " the localization of the Creative Class". Simplistic but convenient models of understanding substitute the beauty of well formulated theories supported by empiric findings. - The focus of the paper is two projects addressing the conditions of regional innovation in Ostfold, Norway. Ostfold is one of Norway's 19 provinces, governed by a regional council, with five towns and a total population of nearly 250 000 inhabitants. The main core of the two projects is groups of actors defining their opportunities in a concrete context; the theoretical and methodological approach is action research and process theory. - Establishing a regional strategy for Ostfold merge decision makers representing the interests of the regional governmental bodies, industry and working life, and the university and regional college on shared arenas, aiming at a learning process where the participants develops the ability to understand the different actors capacities and strategic goals - ultimately to test if there is a common ground for mutual collective action. The process is time consuming, depending on the actors themselves, the process within the group and how the work evolves. - Establishing productive cooperation is building on the same premises although the focus is not regional strategies as such but concrete innovation in local businesses, sharing knowledge and resources across traditional business sectors. - Using the two projects as cases, the paper argues that regional research aiming at regional innovations in Ostfold must be based on strategies growing from the developing understanding of Ostfold's specific opportunities, supported by the meticulous work of empirical research addressing the opportunities of the actors, the available assets and the historical context in an ongoing learning process developing the social capital of the actors. - Rendering the regions innovative capacity in a narrative that envelopes and brings forward the collective strength of the regional government, the R&D institutions and the businesses acting together, is a basis for understanding the regions social and innovative capital and could be evaluated as the IC of the region if it meets the demands of management and reporting.
