During the morning session four top-class speakers passed on their professional experience in cluster internationlisation: Christoph Beer, current cluster manager of the year, tcbe.ch - ICT Cluster Bern, talked about his experiences in the internationalisation process of the ICT Cluster Bern. He emphasized that internationalisation of clusters was first and foremost "people's business". Despite far distances, personal contacts are the basic condition for transnational cluster cooperation.
How personal contacts can be reasonably complemented was illustrated by Philipp Oswald from MFG Baden-Württemberg. He introduced the collaboration platform KREATEK. This social media platform gives cluster managers the opportunity to virtually network with other experts and to check information on current cluster trends in manuals and wikis.
Carsten Schierenbeck, Policy officer at DG Enterprise and Industry from the European Commission delivered insights into the Commission policies to support the internationalisation of clusters. He outlined that the Commission's focus was mainly on fostering some world class clusters instead of supporting a multitude of cluster initiatives.
Finally, Lucia Seel, coordinator EU projects for Clusterland Oberösterreich described the role of cluster-organisations in the internationalisation process of clusters. From her point of view, EU projects constitute one of the most difficult activites in the field of internationalisation of clusters. Yet, the latter would make a big contribution to cluster internationalisation in Upper Austria; for example the internationalisation of the regional cluster policy as well as the spill over effect on other regional organisations that profit form international activities.
The presentations are available on www.kreatek.de .
The afternoon session was organised in a cluster café format. The experts discussed their point of view on internationalisation, EU-cluster-policy, cluster-qualification and gave valuable input on how they expect TCI to support the internationalisation process of clusters. Outputs will be presented and further developed on the occasion of the 12th TCI Annual Global Conference in Jyväskylä within the Cluster Café of the TCI German Contact Point "Internationalisation of Clusters: Enabler for recovery in the new competitiveness scenario".
Background
Under the patronage of the TCI German Contact Point, MFG Baden-Württemberg together with other German speaking institutional members such as IHK Zetis, ZENIT and tcbe.ch - ICT Cluster Bern fosters a dialogue on opportunities and challenges of cluster internationalisation. This is the second time the Special Interest Group on Internationalisation of Clusters met; it is open to anyone interested in exchanging views with other cluster experts on the topic of internationalisation of clusters.
If you are interested in more detailed information on the TCI Special Interest Group on Internationalisation, please contact info@tci-network.de.
19 August 2009
