Paper presented at the ERA-SPACE Workshop 'Challenges of multi-level, multi-actor science and technology policies'. LABEIN, Bilbao, 3rd-4th October 2005The aim of this paper is to show how the regional technology policy of the Basque Country has had a strong effect on mapping out the population of R&D organisations, through changing the environmental conditions of previously existing research organisations as well as creating new organisational actors. This research seeks to contribute the debates on the growing importance of Regional research systems, the organisational adaptation to multi actor governance, and the blurring organisational boundaries between public and private spheres of R&D centres. The paper analyses the changes that have been promoted by the Basque regional technology policy in the environment where the Technological Centres inhabit, between 1980 and 2000, and explain the role of policymaking in R&D organisational change. Six variables emerging from Population Ecology perspective have been used to measure the environment and its changes. These are: hostility, munificence, power concentration, actors' heterogeneity, actors' coordination, and stability of demands.