To improve and strengthen regional development is often subject of political decisions. This is thesituation within the European Union, to increase innovation in SMEs. SMEs need access to knowledge,competence and collaboration, in order to increase their opportunities to develop competitiveness inproducts higher up in the value chain. The increasing rate of change in society also creates needs ofdecreasing the time from knowledge development to ready products to the market. Ongoing evaluationis prevalent in many research and development projects today in order to follow up the intended results.The ongoing evaluation could contribute to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of a specificinnovation project by highlight areas of improvement and needs of development. The purpose of thispaper is to analyze how collaboration within research and innovation can be evaluated, using a specificinnovation project as an example. Qualitative methods have been used for the data collection andanalysis, based on documents, interviews and participation in various activities. An intervention theory iscreated, as interpreted and structured based on information from documents and interviews. Theintervention theory should be further refined, and could be used to select important aspects of theinnovation project for the further evaluation. The intervention theory can be used to evaluate the causesand effects, and if the innovation project is reaching its intended final achievements and results.