Paper prepared for the Final Report of the CONVERGE project (TSER Programme SOE2-CT98-2047) by Emilio Muñoz, UPC, CSIC, Madrid, in collaboration with the CONVERGE team: Manuel Mira Godinho (CISEP, Lisbon), coordinator of the project; Jean- Alain Héraud (BETA, Strasbourg), R. Evangelista (CNR, Rome), J. Cogan and J. McDevitt (University College, Dublin) and A. Isaksen (STEP, Oslo)One of the first goals of the CONVERGE project was to get a proxy explanation of the process of convergence in Europe. The present part of the report aims to analyse the influence of policies related to science, technology and innovation in the economic development of the Less Favoured Regions (LFRs) of Europe. Different instruments and policies have been proposed to correct for the structural deficits that lead to gaps in convergence. On one side, experts propose measures relative to the main economic stream such as to introduce greater flexibility and liberalisation of the labour and service markets. Others propound the need of more innovation, R&D activities and civil infrastructures which implies the requirement of structural reforms in institutional, R&D and education policies.By the same nature of the CONVERGE project, the work of the partners has focused on the analysis of the relevance of the innovation policies in their countries and regions for economic development, in agreement with the second line of initiatives that has been proposed above as an instrument for the catching-up of the less developed Europe. Therefore, the present paper aims to analyse the outcomes of the innovation policies and their effects on catching-up under the comparative frame of what is being discussed, assessed and developed in Norway and the Alsace and Baden regions as a reference for a benchmarking exercise. The theoretical frame supporting the comparative analysis refers to the current concepts of "knowledge-based economy" and "systems of innovation" as both being considered good instruments to leave aside the idea of uniform process taking place in all countries and to understand the diversity of the transformation processes and the different paths followed by each country or region in their walk to the new economy.