Two recent bills introduced would significantly increase the federal investment into business incubators around the country. These initiatives have top-level support, and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in an interview, “We really think they’ll have tremendous payoffs for job creation and business across the country.”

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Following suit of other sectors in Europe, the implementation of mega-clusters or cluster networks is critical for securing. According to Mr. du Plessis, improving the efficiency of Europe’s chemical sites, chemical clusters, networks and mega clusters is paramount for the survival of the European chemical industry and for making it more attractive for further and future investment. Continue reading at ICIS

In short, with Cluster Activation I am referring to a “bottom up” approach, where the foundation and growth strategy is based upon the local/regional assets, industry and how this can best serve the demand in the market. Basically, the government and local policy makers role is to act as a catalyst and help remove bottlenecks and growth hurdles for local industry and R&D sector.

On the other hand, with a Cluster Creation approach, I am refereeing to a situation where through a “top down” approach, government or policy makers are creating an industry or a cluster presence by investing and in many cases building from “scratch”. Both approaches may be successful, but there is no doubt that the latter (Cluster Creation) will also carry more risk and likely demand a significant investment.

In a recent article published at Businessweek.com , Vivek Wadhwa shares his thoughts and insights about the challenge of “engineering or creating clusters” using a top-down approach. Interesting read indeed.

A project consortium of 9 partners and 15 associated partners has been established. An overarching aim of the project activities is to provide better health care, reduce costs of the health care systems and promote regional economic development.

More information about this initiative here.

Cluster-Excellence.eu will act as a central hub and gathering point for professionals and organizations in order to promote and share cluster management excellence and best practices.

The initiative was launched in October 2009, and will run for 36 months.

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15 clusters from around the country was nominated, but Humber Seafood Processing Cluster took the top place as the best overall cluster based on its its exceptional entrepreneurial dynamism, innovation, skills base and level of internationalisation. Cluster Marks were also awarded to the North West Aerospace Cluster, North West Biomedical Cluster and the East of England Health Life Sciences Cluster.

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Although the concept of industry cluster is nothing new to North American economic development professionals, European policymakers seems to have a leg-up when it comes to create competitive advantages for their regional clusters by organizing the cluster stakeholders in member organizations, driven by a growth and marketing strategy executed by a central cluster management overseen by a Board of Directors.

Looking to create growth and return on investment, the cluster management is actively pursuing a growth strategy built on objectives similar to that of a business. This includes a market driven approach to determine focus and investment activities. The industry and the market opportunity in large set the agenda for the cluster.

The cluster is actively pursuing a marketing and branding strategy in order to assist their stakeholders as well as to attract inward investments. Within several industries a number of European clusters are actively competing to position themselves as the ‘go-to-cluster’ for innovation and entrepreneurship.

Within the European food industry, there are over a dozen clusters utilizing this strategy many just a cluster name or yet to be realized – but a handful are very successful and well recognized.

Clusters like Food Valley (Netherlands), Oresund Food (Sweden & Denmark) and Vitagora in France all enjoy international recognition and continue to attract foreign direct investments thanks to their active marketing efforts.

Should a non-European food company or R&D organization look to establish itself on the continent – there would be several well known clusters that would be the natural first point of consideration.

In North America the situation is different. Although there are many metropolitan areas that have a bolstering food industry, but no region has yet capitalized on the opportunity to organize a cluster and position themselves as the go-to region for food technology and innovation.In North America several regions has gained status as the go-to area for particular industries, in most cases mostly due the sheer volume and presence of the particular industry stakeholders. Examples can be Silicon Valley for IT, Houston for oil and gas. Los Angeles for entertainment, and more recent emerging areas as for instance New York and California for cleantech.

In the food industry, the situation is a bit different. Based on the initial definition of a cluster, pretty much every city in North America has a food cluster. There are industry, government and academia that interact, collaborate and compete in some degree. These can all be called food clusters – but is a result of coincidence rather than a cluster with a purpose.

There is an opportunity for the Greater Toronto Region to be the first mover within the food industry and position the region as the leading and go-to cluster for food innovation and food development.

Toronto based, Accelligent Management Group has recognized this opportunity, and in the fall of 2009, representatives from the company started meeting with key stakeholders in the greater Toronto region. After several months of lobbying towards local, regional and federal stakeholders – in large due to the interest in seeing the local economy benefit from this opportunity, there is now a project underway to further explore this opportunity.

There should not be a major lift to organize the already significant food industry in the Greater Toronto Area into a cluster with purpose. By doing so, the industry and its stakeholders will signalize to the world that the region has a leading industry and should be on top of the list for companies and organizations looking for a North American point of entry.

Building on the proven models and structure from Europe, the regional industry stakeholders need to address critical issues like organizational models, governance structure long and short-term goals.

The window of opportunity is closing, as there is an increasing interest in the concept of using cluster development as a tool to drive economic growth. Also, throughout North America several regions well positioned to pull the trigger on a Food Industry Cluster Initiative, and some have already have indicated the interest in building a food cluster.In the Greater Toronto Region, the non-profit organization TRRA (Toronto Region Research Alliance) has taken on the role as the “Clusterpreneur” to further explore and define the opportunity.

The funding includes up to $7.2 million under the Agri-Science Clusters initiative, with a $1.5 million contribution from the Canadian Dairy Commission and $121,000 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The funding will support the Dairy Farmers of Canada’s contribution of $3 million for the cluster.

The Government of Canada is also providing up to $995,000 in the Dairy Farmers of Canada’s Canadian Quality Milk (CQM) food safety system, which helps producers proactively strengthen on-farm food systems. This funding will help the DFC develop a national database (National Electronic Administration System – NEAS) to track on-farm audits and manage the validation and registration processes for the system.