¹Several changes occurred in the transition from the FP6 to the FP7 including a larger budget, a longer duration (increased from 5 to 7 years) and a new mechanism aiming to enhance long-term private-public partnerships (i.e. the so-called Joint Technologies Initiatives). Furthermore, an accentuated international dimension and a special attention devoted to SMEs (including a package close to 1 billion euros) are both features of the more recent FP. However, even though all these relevant differences certainly influenced the number of regional organizations in terms of overall participations, they did not affect the dynamic approach we adopted and the results of our comparison. This consideration is based on the fact that our statistical and cluster analyses were carried out within each FP and that the aforementioned changes pertained indiscriminately to all the organizations which participated to either the FP6 or FP7.