This three-year study considers the Linz metropolitan area as a "creative milieu". The aim is firstly to record the spectrum of innovative actors and services in the region, looking at technical and economic innovations as well as social and cultural ones; secondly, to analyze the conditions of regional innovation performance; thirdly, building on this, to investigate or develop possibilities for increasing innovation performance in the Linz metropolitan area by means of interventions, i.e. through targeted individual, company or regional policy measures. The study is based in particular on innovation ecology models and network analytical approaches of innovation research.