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What is an innovative cluster? |
Clumps or innovative clusters?Many of the clusters we have worked in around the world are more clumps than innovative systems. The businesses are located together but there is limited interaction between the component parts of the cluster and limited interaction between the organisations that comprise the cluster component.
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| The core elements of a high performing cluster |
Clumps have an absence of social capital (the investment in building personal relationships) and this leads to a lack of trust. This leads to an underperforming cluster as there is limited circulation of tacit information and limited development of highly specialised competencies.
A clutter of publicly funded agencies that have different agendas in supporting the core and support firms can also limit the deepening of the cluster’s core competencies.
What characterises and innovative cluster?
In an innovative, high performance cluster there is:
- broad agreement across the cluster on the constraints and opportunities
- both competition and collaboration between firms: a culture of co-opetition
- an ability to collaboratively engage
- a willingness and ability to quickly move beyond the strategy into action
- tight alignment between the four elements of a cluster
How do we move from clumps & clutter to innovative clusters?
The essence of our approach in nurturing competitiveness is to remove the isolation of the cluster’s individual stakeholders, building them into an integrated and holistic system.
- We place emphasis on the development of a multiplicity of linkages within the cluster’s components, and between them;
- We foster the development of linkages beyond the cluster;
- We facilitate the building of whole-of-government support to the core and support firms;
- We ensure broad ownership of the cluster’s strategy and early action, with private sector leadership;
- We train facilitators, based within the cluster, who provide the necessary neutral corner to bring together the cluster’s stakeholders and establish the forward agenda.
Our training programmes address the practical approaches and tools and in moving from clumps and clutter to innovative clusters.
We have nurtured the development of innovative, high performance clusters that today have a global reach, even from small and remote communities.
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