Last update date 10 February 2022
Competitive intelligence and foresight initiatives developed by Basque Clusters with support from SPRI/Basque Government:
Basque clusters support programme has considered competitive intelligence and foresight as an essential input for cluster organisations strategy building and a groundbase for developing innovation.
In 2008, the Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism, through SPRI, launched OCI (Observatorio de Coyuntura Industrial), a Cluster Observatory on Economic Outlook and Industrial Trends, with the goal of sharing strategic information on industry trends and economic outlook through the Cluster management organisations (CMOs) with the Basque administration. At least once a year, OCI has gathered all Basque CMO managers with senior Government officers from relevant Departments (including mobility and transportation, Energy Agency, Environmental Agency, Transports and Mobility, besides economic development department) chaired by Basque minister for Economic Development. The meeting has a bilateral/multilateral approach, with both CMOs share views among each other and to/from the relevant Government departments.
In 2009, the Basque Government’s Department of Industry, Innovation, Commerce and Tourism developed with Basque clusters and in the framework of “Innova Cooperación” initiative, their Cluster Competitive Intelligence Systems (SICC), testing and implementing different platforms, , with the goal of allowing companies, in particular SMEs, to identify opportunities and dynamise collaboration around different trends.
More recently, in 2019, focus was set on cross-cluster approach: ten Basque cluster management organisations joined “CollaborActive Intelligence and Watch” Work Group (Vigilancia e Inteligencia ColaboraCtiva), with SPRI’s support, working on 4 areas:
• Cluster Policy (Acceleration of Innovation, Talent Development, EU & State calls for cross-cluster initiatives, Management Excellence and Competitiveness, Performance and satisfaction Evaluation mechanisms)
• Internationalisation
• Energy efficiency & Ecological Transition
• Smart Cities & Mobility
All CMO use and feed a collaborative online tool for capturing relevant information (vigilance), transforming knowledge into projects (intelligence) through collaborative ideation and priorisation of joint actions (cross-cluster) and validation of collaborative projects.