Innovation is acknowledged as an engine to boost competitiveness and sustainability of rural economies. However, there is scarce evidence on the patterns and dynamics of rural innovation: OECD and European Union indicators currently used to identify and measure innovation do not cover small-scale, low technological and low intensity-R&D innovations. Recent research has shed some light on "hidden" innovation patterns and on their importance to the competitiveness of traditional low-tech sectors and the vitality of regions whose economies depend mostly on low-tech activities. This paper introduces a comprehensive innovation indicator system addressing innovation processes in ruralbased organizations. Its application in the Portuguese case made it possible to identify and understand the specificities of innovation patterns in rural areas.

Abstract. This paper builds on the findings of a survey to the innovative organizations located in Portuguese rural areas. This survey has been underlined and applied in the context of the project RUR@L INOV. The paper has two goals: to explore how networking is used by rural-based organizations and, second, to discuss how networking could be promoted by public policy to boost collaborative innovation. The evidence presented and discussed indicates that networking is used by rural-based innovators as a multipurposed tool including the establishment of networks to obtain scale/scope effects and/or access local, mostly intangible, resources of rural areas. However, conventional innovation networks, usually led by R&D units or top-associations don't appear as a significant resource for most of the innovators. Probably, due to the organizations smallness, the high qualification of innovation leaders, together with their entrepreneurial attitude, these innovators search for knowledge and other resources by their own means and initiative. Nevertheless, this entrepreneurial attitude towards knowledge, information and skills demand could be shared by other, both existing organizations and new-entrants in the rural economies, through new networking models led by the innovators.

Rural areas tend to not be perceived as particularly innovative areas, in spite of a growing diversity of rural economies related to new activities and new types of innovation which rely largely on a (re)discovery and reconfiguration of rural resources. The aims of this paper are two fold. First it introduces a comprehensive typology of traditional and “new” rural resources, showing relevance for the development of innovation in rural areas, built on a systematic literature review; then it uses this typology to underpin an analysis of empirical data on innovations introduced by organizations located in the Portuguese rural areas. This analysis allows identification of the categories of resources that do contribute the most to rural innovations and to group rural innovative organizations according to the patterns of rural (and non‐rural) resources they use to innovate. The identified innovation clusters highlight the importance of the “new” rural resources, such as “natural and cultural amenities” and “traditions,” as well as the “rural populations” themselves and their “territories and settlements,” both at organizational and territorial levels. The paper contributes for a better understanding of what are the key rural resources to shape the rural areas innovation dynamics and to identify the innovation patterns built on different rural resources. Its findings show very helpful to the design of innovation policies and the territorial smart specialization agendas meant to address the rural areas, that have been so far neglected in this matter.