Hosted by Vinnova, the workshop also had representation from Paper Province, Triple Steelix, Scottish Enterprise, Innovation Norway, Technology Centre Hermia, and Region Varmland.
Key points to come out of the workshop were:
- Finding areas of easy cooperation as a first step in building trust;
- The importance of collaboration with purpose;
- The role of large companies - both as a positive driver of innovation, and as a potential barrier to radical change;
- The importance of leadership and champions ("burning souls") to bring energy and dynamism to a cluster;
- How often stories are more important than figures to show what works and what doesn't.
Learning and next steps discussed included;
- Expanding to other clusters within each region
- Repeating the study on the same cluster to see change and progress;
- Expanding to other countries (Innovation Norway were present and the network had been approached with interest from France to look at some Pole de Competitivite);
- Using the methodology to look at collaboration within and between regions. This may need a version of the tool to be developed, but the same processes (cooperation, building trust and leading to deeper levels of collaboration) could be seen;
- Making sure that any analysis is seen as useful to the cluster (done with them, not to them) and therefore can be used in strategy and planning ("Always get something back");
- How cluster dynamics could be used as an analysis of the "soft" elements alongside more traditional "hard" data and information measurement.
For the Loop Network itself the group were keen to see it continue with the core focus of the meetings being built around experience of using the Cluster Dynamics model. The network plans to meet twice a year, one coinciding with the TCI conference. At the next TCI conference it has been suggested that other regions (other than Scottish Enterprise who originally developed the methodology) present their experience of using the methodology. It is hoped that a space on the TCI website can be used to host reports, presentations and case studies to help sharing of experience.
The issue of funding was discussed. There were suggestions of applications for funding through Interreg (4C) and ProInno (strand 2). This will be actively pursued by members of the group.
The next meeting of the Loop Network will be in October, during the 12th TCI Annual Global Conference, Jyväskylä 2009, Finland.
04 May 2009
