This public mission, carried out by experienced local staff of the centres, consists mainly in promoting innovation in a broad sense, providing information on the available schemes, liaising on an ongoing basis with companies and academia, etc. The overarching mandate of these permanent organisations should not be technology transfer from universities to firms but the enhancement of firms’ absorptive capacities and learning abilities as a core determinant of innovation performance at firm level. In fact, the two dimensions, although distinct if only for the sake of sound budgeting, co-exist in the structure, i.e. the public mission background work and the project-based support to individual SMEs or group of SMEs (Table 5.9).