Alpine rural communities often lack a good provision of services as well as a favourable climate for entrepreneurship and social innovation. Digitalisation is a promising approach to counter the situation, but remains unexploited. SmartVillages unlocked the potential of local actors to make their region a more attractive place to live and work through new forms of stakeholder involvement, by bringing together policy makers, business, academia and the civil society. Finally, the transfer of the project results to the policy level contributed to improve the political framework conditions for digital innovation, for both the organisational / societal part and the technical part.