Since the mid 90s, the idea of building on clusters to create a competitive regional structure, accelerating innovation, achieving critical mass, encouraging entrepreneurship, etc., in an organized manner, has become increasingly dominant in economic development and innovation policy. These deliberated efforts are often referred to as Cluster Initiatives (CI).

The possibility of creating a formal structure and program around a cluster – develop a Cluster Initiative is an issue that we often see the organizations we work with finds quite compelling.

Clusters and Cluster Initiatives are often used synonymously in practical terms. However, whereas clusters describe existing economic structures (independent from political initiatives), Cluster Initiatives are defined as:

Organized efforts to increase growth and competitiveness of clusters within a region, involving cluster firms, government and/or the research community.

The Cluster Initiative Greenbook 2003 (Sölvell et al. 2003)

Central to the idea of a Cluster Initiative are several key factors; creating a central management organization for information sharing and joint representation, developing a governance model. strategy development and reporting procedure, membership offering (in many cases membership is a for-fee arrangement) and branding and marketing of the cluster.

Our research has identified several factors that are critical to the development, launch and viability of Cluster Initiatives. Some of these are quite obvious, including industry involvement (market pull strategy vs. technology pull), creating CIs around technologies and focus areas that are native to the region, sound development of vision and mission etc. We will cover these and more in postings to follow.