This is the title of a conference that took place in Berlin in September last year. The conference was organized by the European Academy for Taxes, Economics & Law, with the support of European Commission. Speakers and participants were from all over Europe. It was demonstrated that in the vast majority of EU countries governments – both national and regional – recognized the potential of clusters as drivers of the innovation process and they are strongly supporting them. Importance of clusters is even more valuated by European Commission, which is supporting and financing different programs, initiatives and events related to clusters.
Why am I writing about this conference?
It was source of many interesting and useful information for anybody who participates in the work and/or management of some cluster. Unfortunately there is not a web page, where one could find all conference presentations. I will mention some of them, who drew my attention and where a web page was presented.
First of all it is the page http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/innovation/index_en.htm, which is an EC web page with all information about different initiatives, programs, polices and events. Besides other one can find that the Commission has adopted a Communication: “Towards world-class clusters in the European Union: Implementing the broad-based innovation strategy.”
There is another one: http://www.europe-innova.org/index.jsp, which is page of Europe INNOVA – initiative for innovation professionals. On this page one can find a lot of information about concrete clusters, financial mechanisms, management and services.
One activity of Europe INNOVA, results of which were presented at the conference, was mapping of clusters in EU and evaluation of them. Results, which are quite interesting and worth of thinking about could be found on http://www.clusterobservatory.eu/.
One of the most inspiring speaker was Emiliano Duch, founder and president of the Cluster Competitiveness Group who demonstrated a lot of practical experience from his activities as an advisor for public administrative institutions in different countries of EU as well as Thailand, Argentina and Colombia. http://www.competitiveness.com/
Yes, clusters and networks are currently very important and strongly supported by the EU. But is there sufficient and concrete support or is help mostly provided verbally?
Also in Austria people realized the importance of clusters and networks, yesterday a “cluster homepage” has gone online: http://www.clusterplattform.at/ (unfortunately currently only available in German but soon also available in English).