Words of the President
Dear TCI friends,
In my first intervention of this year, I dedicated part of my words to identify some of the main challenges for the near future of TCI. As we are now halfway through the year, I would like to share some additional thoughts regarding few of these topics: participation, inclusion and neutrality.
TCI is an organization established under the form of professional association, but it is, first of all, a network of cluster practitioners and professionals dedicated to competitiveness, innovation and regional development. The structure is very lean and simple. Without forgetting the wonderful job done by the secretariat in Barcelona, TCI's strength lies mainly in its members.
The added value of TCI consists primarily of creating occasions to meet in person and to provide the best format for networking and knowledge sharing. Those who have attended some of the TCI events, in which I've had the pleasure to participate in the last months, have already heard me saying that TCI was initially established by a group of cluster practitioners with the objective of sharing their experiences in an open and constructive environment. This is certainly true and surely continues to be one of the pillars of TCI, but because of the growth and enlargement of the network it is sometimes useful to remember the spirit of this initial wish and the fact that this mutual interchange works only in an open, transparent and constructive environment.
Communication works especially well among people who understand that sharing knowledge is in several cases more beneficial that hoarding it, and it works even better when a lot of people with different background and visions are involved.
As Kevin Kelly reminds in his book New Rules for the New Economy, "The value of a network explodes as its membership increases, and then the value explosion sucks in yet more members, compounding the result." This is why participation is important; the more the participants, the richer the network is. Nevertheless, an extensive participation shouldn't necessarily translate into -- generalization of concepts or into -- superficiality of the discussion. The role of the interest groups or the diversification of the format of TCI events in the last year is in fact a response and a consequence of the enlargement of the organization. An important point in question is that participation should translate into membership. As many other organizations, TCI has a great mission and some ambitious objectives, but it needs resources to achieve them. Achieving the goals comes down to the members, and doing things requires more than mere enthusiastic support.
If participation is important, then the word "inclusion" refers to another important aspect of TCI community and its dynamic. TCI was created in a time in which the cluster concept started spreading to various regions and countries around the word. However, at that stage the array of methodologies in cluster initiatives were still relatively limited and quite homogeneous. Over the past decade and especially in the last years, "cluster" has become one of the most popular words among policymakers and regional development professionals around the world. The varieties of methodologies and ways to implement cluster reinforcement initiatives have grown accordingly.
Faced with an abundance of new cluster theories, the TCI community has decided to embrace almost all of these new approaches, models and methodologies. TCI events have become a point of reference for those who use clusters as regional development tools and TCI's door has been open to all kinds of approaches in cluster development methodology. Inflow of new members with their methodologies and ways of understanding the concept of cluster is certainly a source of richness for the network. The plurality of approaches may have, on the other hand, perplexed those who have been looking for orientation and validation from TCI. In an open and global network complete unanimity is difficult to reach, and TCI has chosen to maintain openness and inclusion of new concepts, even with the risk of slowing down on the pathway towards the improvement of general methodology that was the organisation's great, second purpose when it was established.
Finally, I would like to spend a few words on neutrality. This has always been an imperative for TCI and a sine qua non condition for its credibility and sustainability. TCI community includes a wide array of economic development stakeholders who bring richness and variety to the network. Nevertheless, the community also includes actors who are competing in the market for projects, FDI attraction and public resources. This is fine and it is the only way of having everybody on board, learning from many different methodologies and working as a network of practitioners instead of only taking an academic standpoint. Neutrality, however, is a costly effort to maintain and wouldn't be totally effective if it didn't come from bottom up. TCI could define a nice codes of ethics, but it is everybody's responsibility to maintain candid and transparent behavior.
Participation, inclusion and neutrality form therefore a sort of PIN ("personal identification number") through which everybody should find one's own way of taking advantage of participating in this network. TCI may set some common rules for the use of the code, but it will not dictate the exact combinations.
Alberto Pezzi
TCI President
|
