The overall aim of the SUMUP is to encourage European higher education institutions to exchange their university strategic management practices in order to combine and co-generate improvement approaches and tools for a common-understanding and transparent European framework for the university management modernisation. This all-embracing goal translates itself into the establishment of a standout platform for best practice knowledge transfer, giving responses to the identified gaps within the current projects on the subject of university management modernisation. Within this context, the project will ensure that the Observatory knowledge database is embedded in the European strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth – EUROPE 2020”, by promoting the exchange of practices on university management and governance throughout the European Union and also fostering benchmarking.For this purpose, the following specific objectives have been set up :• To carry out a desk-research of the current state-of-the-art of strategic university management projects, tools and techniques in the science and technology universities as well as innovative practices which facilitate the continuous improvement of the strategic management of the higher education institutions.• To establish an observatory of innovative practices in strategic university management to foster benchmarking of European universities for improvement and promoting dialogue between the university stakeholders.• To test the tools and approaches between the universities involved in order to validate them as transferable methods and techniques for a common framework. • To produce guidelines on the impact of sharing the strategic university management practices on the European priorities, the national higher education policies and the university strategies.• To increase the awareness of the higher education stakeholders on the importance of their contribution to the improvement of university management.