CLUSTERIX 2.0

New Models of Innovation for Strategic Cluster Partnerships 

ClusteriX 2.0 is a project financed under the Interreg Europe programme that addresses the improvement of regional innovation policies by making better use of clusters. Over decades clusters have proven to be efficient policy instruments enabling cooperation between industry, research and policy, but ClusteriX 2.0 looks forward into new ways of facilitating intra and inter regional cooperation. This shall be done by focusing on the identification and structured use of complementary industrial and research competences and by introducing new models of innovation through the implementation of strategic cluster partnerships.

New models of innovation are needed because globalization and digitalization cause rapidly changing value chains and business models. The policy makers need to be aware of such developments to keep the pace and be able to provide fast and flexible support for emerging industries in order to make/keep a region competitive at global scale.

Innovation for Clusters

The goal of the consortium is to increase the number of collaborations between enterprises and knowledge institutions towards new industrial value chains through cross-cluster cooperation and eventually to new products and solutions. For this, it is necessary to improve the policy instruments related to networking, clusters and open innovation through the smart specialization approach.

The way towards reaching this objective demands to increase the number, the quality and intensity of interaction of cross-sector cluster partnerships: both within each partner region as well as between the regions based on complementary competences identified through smart regional profiling.

The project approach is to set-up and implement the right framework for exchanging own experiences and learning between the partners: dedicated activities like workshops, events, peer-reviews, study trips, staff exchanges shall enable the participating organisations to learn, adapt the good practices to the realities of their regions and implement on this bases new measures and actions leading to a better policy making.

We see ClusteriX 2.0 as a small community of cluster-related actors dedicated to exchange, learn and improve, intra but also inter community. Looking into Open Innovation processes, our attitude is just as open for the broader European cluster community, willing to share with it our joint experiences and policy learning results.