P-IRIS was based on the demand from Managing Authorities (MAs) to better support rural innovation in these regions. The initiative to address the issue through a project was taken during Euromontana’s General Assembly in November 2015. P-IRIS includes several members of our network: the County of Vestland (Norway), the Province of Burgos (Spain), Poliedra (Italy) and the Local Development Agency PINS (Croatia).

P-IRIS was born out of the need to build a vision of the management of rural innovation networks that would be different from the concepts and lessons learned from urban clusters. Rural innovation networks are about building the invisible ‘knowledge bridges’ in order to share knowledge.