Emerging digital technologies present new opportunities for developing complex cooperative strategies that change the way people work together to solve problems and generate wealth. Central to this class of cooperation-amplifying technologies are eight key clusters, each with distinctive contributions to cooperative strategy:

In March 2000 the Lisbon European Council adopted the European Research Area (ERA), in order to structure and promote the concept of European research and cooperation between all actors in the field of science and technology within the European Union. Its goal is to contribute to making the European Union become by 2010 the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.