Irish Regions Office Website

October 28, 2008

World class clusters

Europe boasts an estimated 2,000 industrial clusters - groups of firms, related economic actors and research institutions that are located near each other who have developed specialised expertise, services, resources, uppliers and skills - yet these are often fragmented and lacking the necessary critical mass and innovation capacity to sustainably face global competition. A communication from the Commission published on 17 October calls for greater efforts to facilitate their emergence as world-class entities to drive economic development.

Improved synergies between the different policy levels are felt necessary to strengthen clusters and the document
addresses five key challenges: deepening the internal market to remove remaining barriers to the circulation of knowledge, personnel and finance; improving national cluster policies through the Lisbon National Reform programmes; fostering complementary transnational cooperation on cluster-design among Members States and regions; promoting better cluster management; and improving the integration of innovative SMEs into clusters and international technology transfer.

To fully reap the benefits of these actions, the Commission proposes a pilot scheme offering training programmes and a platform for cooperation of cluster managers towards a quality label and to further streamline its funding programme initiatives of relevance to cluster support. Establishing a European Cluster Policy Group to share intelligence about cluster policies is also proposed.

Communication:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/innovation/
doc/com_2008_652_en.pdf

Posted by iroronan at October 28, 2008 08:11 PM