The Cluster Academy 2019 organised by Business Upper Austria on 5-8 November 2019 in Linz, Austria, is a good opportunity to:

The European Commission's Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SME is establishing a Commission Expert Group on Clusters.

The Catalan Water Partnership (CWP) organized a mission in Colombia between May 27 and 30, aimed to promote cooperation with different clusters in Colombia through the Red Cluster (Colombian Cluster Network), the Colombian Private Council on Competitiveness (Consejo Privado de Competitividad), and the National Business Association of Colombia (ANDI).

The 3rd EOCIC newsletter is now available! Have a look at it to learn the outcomes of flagship events such as the 2019 European Cluster Conference in Bucharest, the 4th European Cluster Policy Forum in Brussels, the Joint Peer Review meeting of Model Demonstrator regions in Turin and the High-level conference on Digital Cities Challenges. The newsletter also covers new deliverables produced by EOCIC such as the Cluster Mapping Tool, the Summary Report on Policy Lessons learnt and the Smart Guide for European Strategic Cluster Partnerships. 

The Regional Innovation Scoreboard (RIS) is a regional extension of the European Innovation Scoreboard, assessing the innovation performance of European regions on a limited number of indicators. The RIS 2019 covers 238 regions across 23 EU countries, Norway, Serbia, and Switzerland. In addition, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg, and Malta are included at country level.

"Following the early successes of the Canadian program, the rise of Asian clusters of innovation, the ongoing changes in the Nordics and across Europe, we are likely to see a number of new Innovation Superclusters towards 2030”. That is one of the conclusions of author Christian Rangen and his team, in the new report, Building Innovation Superclusters, that was published this week.

Employing more than 12 million people in the EU, 80% of whom work in SMEs, the creative and cultural industries (CCIs) are an important but often overlooked sector of the EU economy.  EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (“CETA”) will enhance the Canadian consumer’s access to the EU’s creative and cultural goods, while not only benefiting the business of creative Europeans, but also the protection of their creativity.

In Canada, GI protection is available to specific categories of products. For over twenty years, Canada has maintained a system to protect GIs for wines and spirits. As a result of the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (“CETA”), Canada expanded its GI protection to 24 categories of food and agricultural products and over 170 new agricultural GIs on 21 September 2017.