European Semiconductor Cluster Internationalisation Project (Silicon Europe Worldwide)

Summary and objectives

The cluster partnership Silicon Europe Worldwide wants to implement the third country internationalization strategy as defined within the Silicon Europe project. The internationalization activities defined in this strategy are primarily meant to strengthen the international impact of the cross-regional ecosystem created by the cluster partnership. These activities will focus on three objectives:

1.            Support electronics companies, and more in particular, SMEs, to be present in foreign markets either for business or partnerships.

2.            Attract foreign investment money or actors missing in Europe’s value chain.

3.            Promote the European electronics  industry worldwide.

In order to realize these objectives, Silicon Europe Worldwide will implement and further develop relationships with selected regions outside Europe. The relationship building will be done with one region at a time. Within the Silicon Europe project (FP7), a thorough analysis of regions outside Europe has been made. Based on this analysis, Taiwan and North East USA have been selected as the first two regions to focus on. At least one more region will be selected during the project.

For each region, two main phases are distinguished. First, a relationship will be initiated. The aim is to get a good understanding of the local market, identifying the relevant events and to set up a bridge-head. This is the basis for the next phase, the collaboration development. The collaboration development is the phase of the project where we want the SMEs to take advantage of the relationship that has been implemented.  Matchmaking activities have to be considered. Examples are Business to Business matchmaking events, possibly before or after an important event; a trade mission with visits to selected companies; organizing a visit of foreign companies to Europe and also matchmaking with potential investors. These activities should preferably be executed in cooperation with organizations like EEN or Foreign Trade Organizations in order to give optimal support to the SMEs.

In order to promote the electronics companies from the Silicon Europe Worldwide regions, a marketing & communication plan will be made and executed. Again, the marketing communication plan from Silicon Europe will be the basis. Silicon Europe Worldwide will be the common brand under which the micro- and nanoelectronics ecosystems in the six participating clusters will be promoted on global level. Brochures and flyers developed in the Silicon Europe project will be updated for use by the Silicon Europe Worldwide cluster partnership.

For more information, please have a look at the project's website.